In an airport lounge, Nadia and her son Yuri await the arrival of her husband
Lev. Nadia compares her own terrifying voyage into exile by ship with Lev's more sedate journey by air. She is almost ecstatic at the prospect of his arrival. Yuri, who can't remember his father, becomes surly and impatient with her. Nadia seems to hear Lev's voice.

The telepathy between Nadia and Lev is interrupted by the arrival of Gayle and Hannah, who are there to welcome Olympion, a black champion figure whom they hero-worship. Yuri shows his resentment of his mother's behaviour and rejects Hannah's account of Lev as a political prisoner, half-insisting that like others of his kind, Lev had allowed himself to be trampled under foot.

Olympion's fans invade the airport, sweeping Hannah off with them.

Yuri is jealous of Gayle's adulation of Olympion. She hurries off after Hannah and the fans, leaving Yuri with his mother.

Nadia is anxious about the plane's punctuality. Yuri remains preoccupied.

The fans return, heralding Olympion's arrival with an American-style cheer-leader routine, which Olympion acknowledges.

Left alone, Nadia suddenly recognises the soberly dressed man watching her as her husband.

In Nadia's tiny apartment, she and Lev exchange reminiscences. But when they come to discuss Yuri, Nadia is upset.

Back in the airport lounge,Olympion's fans continue their celebration. He leads them in an assertion of black supremacy. Yuri, unable to contain himself, mocks them bitterly. The white and black fans separate out. Gayle is provoked into self-abasement before Olympion. She throws herself at his feet and the black fans exhort him to take advantage of her. Enraged, Yuri tries to attack Olympion, but is felled with a blow; Olympion kicks out at Gayle as well and the scene ends in tumult.

In the apartment, Nadia and Lev discuss Yuri's behaviour. As the chorus shout in thedistance, Yuri burstsinto the room, dragging Gayle behind him. Meeting his father for the first time, he asks him, bitterly, why he has come.

Scene 1

It is night. In the apartment, Lev, Nadia, Vuri and Gayle present their own sharply defined standpoints. Lev tries to calm the young ones but is rebuffed by Vuri; Gayle, too, rejects the dream of 'liberal charity' to which Lev and Nadia both hold. Gayle and Yuri are drawn away intothe crowd of white people outside. Nadia is devastated, but Lev remains unshaken.

Outside, as if enacting a Ku Klux Klan ritual, the whites sing a hymn declaring their racial purity.

In another part of the city, Olympion is about to leave Hannah to join the black people outside. Hannah questions his automatic acceptance of leadership of the black mob.

Out in the street, the blacks welcome Olympion into their ranks, masking him like themselves and striking poses of aggression.

Hannah searches for some sense amid the violence.

Before Hannah has finished, the black and white mobs begin their ritual confrontation.

Nadia and Lev, in their apartment, are so disconcerted bywhat is happening that they are almost incoherent. Nadia feels impotent and pessimistic, but Lev, questioning his own pacifist principles, feels he must go in search of Yuri.

A riot ensues with casualties on both sides. the police arrive and the crowd scatters.

The Police Lieutenant challenges everyone to regard him in a good or bad light. Luke, the doctor, reveals that Olympion and Gayle are dead. Yuri is discovered badly injured. He is identified by Lev and taken away in an ambulance.

Prompted by Luke, Lev finds comfort and sympathy in Hannah.

Scene 1

Nadia is dying. In the apartment Lev reads to her the passage from Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre about the reconciliation of Wilhelm and his son, Anticipating Lev's own reconciliation with Yuri.

Luke and Hannah arrive and indicate that Vuri may survive. They try to persuade Nadia to relax, but she only wants Lev.

Disturbed by the imminence of his wife's death and by his son's hatred, Lev is for a while unsure of himself. He questions whether, as Yuri had suggested, he had 'flunked the struggle'. Hannah reflects that conflict is ubiquitous-the world is full of ghettos but only rebirth matters as a goal.

Lev and Hannah are interrupted by Nadia, who is caught up in an intense vision of her childhood, recalling the sleigh running through the snow-bound forest, the ice breaking on the river and, as she drifts into death, the idyllic summers and the folk on the river.

As Lev cries out for Nadia to wait for him in Paradise, the scene changes to disclose a crowd of paradise-seekers invoking their cult hero, Astron. This androgynous figure gives them a message, but is disconcerted when they become too adulatory. He debunks them and disappears.

Luke, in his consulting room, persuades Lev that, now Nadia is dead, he must accept responsibility for Yuri. Lev agrees.

At the hospital, Yuri lies on a table, awaiting his release from encasement in plaster. Hannah and Luke wheel him into the operating theatre, while Lev waits apprehensively outside. Yuri bursts from the plaster joyfully.

Scene 8

Young people rush through the hospital, repeating Astron's message of springlike renewal.

Hannah brings Yuri out of the operating theatre in a wheelchair. She helps him up and he goes to meet Lev. They are reconciled, but Yuri is shaky on his feet and both Hannah and Lev caution against over-optimism. Lev quotes Goethe's words to the effect that the cycle of conflict and reconciliation is an eternal feature of human existence.

copyright Meirion Bowen (1999)