Einstein’s nightmare: Serebryakov and Rappoport played love and espionage passions

Einstein’s love affair with Konenkova became known only at the end of the 20th century, when the scientist’s letters to his former lover surfaced at an auction. But in Alexander Marin’s performance, the action takes place long before the appearance of letters – in 1945. USA. A woman comes to the man’s apartment. However, her voice is heard first: “Al, Al! .. Albert Einstein!” A woman in an elegant cappuccino-colored trouser suit with a travel bag appears on stage, where there is only one long ebony table, at the end of which a man sits, his gray tousled head resting on his hands.

– For the second year I have been tormented by a terrible dream … The second city on which they dropped the bomb, I just can’t remember …

— Nagasaki.

– Naga?

– Na-ha-sa-ki. To write to you? – the woman takes a small board covered with some formulas. – Can it be erased?

– Fourteen days, whenever I fell asleep – day, night – the same vile dream.

– What a dream, tell me.

And the man nervously tells that he is dreaming of a bomb falling out of the plane. Atomic. And inside this bomb he lies, completely naked: on one side of the bomb his head sticks out, on the other – hairy legs in slippers. “And from the body of the bomb sticks out my, sorry, circumcised member, but much thicker and longer than in kind. Like a horse. At first, I feel great inside this bomb – I laugh. Do you know what they called those bombs? The one on Hiroshima is “Baby”, and the one on Nagasaki is “Fat Man”. I dream of the Fat Man – the bomb falls, the explosion, and at the same time I scream and disintegrate. I scream and fall apart into a million small pieces … If Freud were alive, I would call him, he would advise me how to get rid of this.

The beginning does not promise any lyrics. On the contrary, the presence of the figure of a great scientist, the mention of the bombing of Japanese cities sets up a serious conversation about the role of science in world history and the responsibility of pundits to humanity. However, scientific discoveries more than once fell into the field of view of playwrights, screenwriters in this perspective, and the personal life of theorists played the role of a side dish in the works. Playwright Alexander Gelman, known for his bold public-sounding plays for the Soviet era, this time turned to the personal life of the great scientist, firmly tying it both to the moral choice of each of the characters and to the political interests of the eternal competitors – the USSR and the USA, and much more.

“Al, why didn’t you meet me at the station?” – the woman takes off her loose jacket and it becomes clear how good her figure is and in what good physical shape the actress Ksenia Rappoport is. Her partner Alexei Serebryakov, in the external drawing of the role of Einstein, on the contrary, demonstrates a complete disregard for appearance: not washed, not combed, not at all taut. In a word, a genius who does not care what they say about his physical form: the world itself, with a breath, listens to what he says. And he tells her about love – as he saw that at that moment he thought how he cheated on his two wives, and she was ten years old – no, no! “For ten years now, you have been different every night. I feel like a Persian nobleman, the owner of a large Persian harem, consisting of only you. I’ll go to Mr. Konenkov.”

Tenderness under the mask of irony in him and for some reason anxiety in her. It turns out that Margarita came to say goodbye: she must return to Moscow with her famous husband. The plot makes the first turn, the point at which will be the tango. This strange couple dances downstage along a long black table – languidly and softly, as only Latinos can do. A delightful, spicy tango, similar to two beautifully floating candles merged into one, teases with a happy ending. But the plot again takes an unexpected turn – Margarita confesses to her lover that she works for … Soviet intelligence.

“So you were spying on me?”

Of course, this production will add to a very short list of the best duet performances, which are recognized as the best in the first place because of the excellent acting. Marina’s simple and subtle directing only emphasizes her class (and this is the merit of directing) – the “premium” class, because it allows you to forget that this is just a game and that these are actors. Of course, Serebryakov outwardly is never the author of the theory of relativity. And, looking at the photo of the Soviet intelligence officer Margarita Konenkova, it’s easy to understand on the Internet: Einstein’s beloved was far from being a beauty and, according to external data, is much inferior to Rappoport. But in this case, the similarity has absolutely no meaning: we have Einstein and Margarita. Striking is Serebryakov, whom the cinema has long made into an angry social hero. In the theatre, he is subtle, ironic, whose negative charm is contagious. But in the performance, the artist also acted as an artist, having developed the very long transforming table, in which there will be decorative charges.

The love of an American scientist and a Russian intelligence officer could not have ended otherwise than tragically. But, even the inevitably tragic finale of this ten-year connection, stretching from the last century into the present and causing keen interest, director Marin will leave behind the scenes, preferring to him a simple and such a cozy ellipsis. However, contrary to the logic and expectations of the audience, the director will extend his charm not with a quote from Einstein’s love letter to Margarita, but with an actual agenda – today there are 13,100 atomic bombs in the world.

After the performance, we talked about the oddities of love, about the struggle between love and duty with playwright Alexander Gelman.

– I have long been interested in the history of the creation of the atomic bomb, atomic war. And then these topics connected with the personal lives of Einstein and Konenkova, – says Alexander Isaakovich. — I liked the plot, and I wrote the play. I started writing four years ago, I worked for a long time, because with interruptions. The first time I wrote a play about real people.

What materials did you use to create the play?

– The source for me was mainly the Internet, I read materials in Russian and English, and people who knew Margarita Konenkova told me something. In 1945, she and her famous husband returned to the Soviet Union and after his death she lived very closed in Moscow – alone, with servants, she did not get out of bed for the last two years.

– And yet it was love or a game for the sake of fulfilling the task of Soviet intelligence?

“It seems to me that Einstein truly loved her. And although he mercilessly cheated on both his first wife and his second, he loved Konenkov. And she loved him. Margarita generally loved famous people. Through her husband, she knew the most interesting people of her time – Mayakovsky, Pasternak, Rachmaninov, with whom she had a connection.

– Why do you think Konenkova, loving Einstein, agreed to work as a spy?

– She and her husband were very patriotic at that time, especially during the war: they collected money for the Red Army. She felt that she could be useful for her homeland, on the one hand, and on the other, she was afraid, because she was intimidated. And yet, this is mainly patriotism, and sincere, which was then the case with very many Russian immigrants.

– What is the share of fiction in this true story?

– I tried not to invent anything special, and if I did, it was within the framework of the real. After all, this is a real fact: after the departure of the Konenkovs to the Soviet Union, Einstein met with the Soviet consul in New York, and articles appeared in the press on this subject, which did a disservice to the scientist. It is no coincidence that in Princeton, where he lived, they refused to make his museum. For me, something else is striking – for 10 years no one suspected the connection between Margarita Konenkova and Albert Einstein. The world found out about this only after Einstein died and his letters to her surfaced. Obviously, they were stolen from her, sold and years later appeared on the market. He wrote to her, but received no answer. About this 46th year he told Ilya Ehrenburg, who arrived in the USA, who was visiting him. Einstein then complained that he did not receive an answer from Konenkova. And he wrote to her in German. The originals are kept in the Jerusalem University Museum. So, Ehrenburg, having returned to Moscow, apparently passed on his complaints to the right person, and Margarita immediately received 12 letters from Einstein. She answered him on small postcards, I read about this in Sudoplatov’s book, there is literally one paragraph.