Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (408 page)

SCENE V

The same,
ZHELTOUKHIN AND JULIE

JULIE: How do you do, Fyodor dear? (They kiss one another.) Do have something, dear. (To ORLOVSKY) Look,

godpa, what a present I am giving Lennie.

(Showing a little shoe to serve as a watch-stand.)

ORLOVSKY: My ducky, my dear little girl, what a fine shoe! What a fine thing!

JULIE: The gold wire-ribbon alone cost eight and a half roubles. Look at the borders: tiny little pearls, tiny little pearls, tiny little pearls. And here are the letters: “ Leonid Zheltoukhin.” Here’s embroidered in silk: “ A present to him I love.” . . .

DYADIN: Do let me have a look! That is fascinating!

FYODOR: That’ll do . . . that’s enough! Julie, tell them to fetch champagne!

JULIE: Fyodor dear, that’s for the evening!

FYODOR: Why, why evening? Tell them to bring it at once, or I’ll go away. ‘Pon my word, I’ll go away. Where do you keep it? I’ll go and fetch it myself.

JULIE: Fyodor dear, in a well-ordered house, you’re always a nuisance. (To VASSILI) Vassili, here’s the key! The champagne is in the pantry, you know, in the corner, just by the bag of raisins, in a basket. Only be careful, don’t break anything!

FYODOR: Vassili, three bottles!

JULIE: You’ll never make a good housekeeper, Fyodor.

. . . (Serving out the pie to the company.) Have some more,

please, gentlemen... Dinner won’t be yet, not till six.

. . . Nothing will come of you, Fyodor dear... You’re a lost creature!

FYODOR: Now, you’ve started preaching.

VOYNITSKY: I think someone has driven up... Do you hear?

ZHELTOUKHIN: Yes... It’s the Serebryakovs. ... At last!
            
(VASSILI announces the SEREBRYAKOVS.)

JULIE (crying out): Sonechka!
           
[Runs out.

VOYNITSKY (singing): “ Let’s go to meet them, let’s go.” . . .
    
[Goes out.

FYODOR: How overjoyed they are!

ZHELTOUKHIN: How very little tact some people possess!

He lives with the professor’s wife and cannot conceal it.

FYODOR: Who does?

ZHELTOUKHIN: George, of course. He praised her so much just now, before you came, that it was even indecent.

FYODOR

: How do you know that he lives with her?

ZHELTOUKHIN: As if I were blind! . . . Besides, the whole district is talking about it.

FYODOR: Nonsense. Nobody has yet lived with her up to now, but soon I shall live with her... Do you see? I!

SCENE VI

THE SAME, SEREBRYAKOV, MARIE VASSILIEVNA, VOYNITSKY, WITH

ELENA ANDREYEVNA ON HIS ARM, SONYA AND JULIE

JULIE (kissing SONYA): My dear! Darling!

ORLOVSKY (going to meet them): How do you do, Alexander,

how are you, old boy? (Embracing one another.)

You are well? Quite well?

SEREBRYAKOV: And how are you, my dear friend? You look fine! I am very glad to see you. How long have you been back?

ORLOVSKY: I returned on Friday. (To MARIE VASSILIEVNA)

Marie Vassilievna! How are you, Your Excellency?

(Kissing her hand.)

MARIE VASSILIEVNA: My dear! . . .

(Kissing him on the head.)

SONYA: Dearest godpa!

ORLOVSKY: Sonechka, my darling! (Kissing her.) My own darling, my little canary bird! . . .

SONYA: As usual, your face is radiant, kindly, sweet! . .

ORLOVSKY: And you’ve grown taller, and handsomer, and shapelier, my sweet. . .

SONYA: How are you getting on? Are you well?

ORLOVSKY: Tremendously well!

SONYA: That’s right, godpa! (To FYODOR) I failed to notice the elephant. (They embraced) Sunburnt, hairy . . .

a real spider!

JULIE: Darling!

ORLOVSKY (to SEREBRYAKOV): How are you getting on,

old boy?

SEREBRYAKOV: So-so... And you?

ORLOVSKY: What can be the matter with me? I live! I

gave my estate to my son, my daughters are married to good men, and now there’s no freer man than myself. I’m enjoying myself!

DYADIN (to SEREBRYAKOV): It pleased Your Excellency to arrive a little late. The temperature of the pie has considerably

gone down. Allow me to introduce myself, Ilya Ilyich Dyadin, or Waffle, as some very wittily call me on account o!

my pock-marked countenance.

F

SEREBRYAKOV: Glad to make your acquaintance.

DYADIN: Madame! Mademoiselle! (bowing to ELENA

and to SONYA). Here are all my friends, Your Excellency.

Once upon a time I had a considerable fortune, but for domestic reasons, or, as people in intellectual centres put it,

for reasons for which the editor accepts no responsibility, I had to give up my share to my own brother, who, on a certain unfortunate occasion, found himself short of seventy thousand roubles of Government money. My profession consists in the exploitation of the stormy elements. I make the stormy waves turn the wheels of a flour mill, which I rent from my friend, the Wood Demon.

VOYNITSKY: Waffle, turn the tap off”!

DYADIN: I always bow down with reverence (bowing down to the ground) before the luminaries of science, who adorn our country’s horizon. Forgive me the audacity with which I

crave to pay a visit to Your Excellency and to delight my soul in a conversation about the ultimate deductions of science.

SEREBRYAKOV: Pray, do come. I shall be pleased.

SONYA: Do tell us, godpa, where did you spend the winter?

Where did you disappear to?

ORLOVSKY: I was in Gmunden, my sweet, I was also in Paris, in Nice; I was in London. . . .

SONYA: Splendid! What a happy man!

ORLOVSKY: Come with me in the autumn. Won’t you?

SONYA (singing): “ Tempt me not without need “...

FYODOR: Don’t sing at lunch, or your husband’s wife will be a silly.

DYADIN: It would be interesting now just to have a glance at this table a vol d’oiseau. What a fascinating bouquet! A

combination of grace, beauty, profound learning, popu
   

FYODOR: What fascinating language! Damn you! You speak as though someone were at work on your back with a plane. . . .
              
(Laughter.)

ORLOVSKY (to SONYA): And you, my darling, you are not yet married. . . .

VOYNITSKY: Good heavens, whom could she marry?

Humboldt is dead, Edison is in America, Schopenhauer is also dead... The other day I found her diary on her table: this size! I opened it and read: “ No, I shall never fall in love... Love is the egotistical attraction of my ego to an object of the opposite sex.” . . . And I wonder what is not there? Transcendental, culminating point of the integrating

principle . . . ugh! And where have you got to know all this?

SONYA: Whoever else may be ironical, you ought not to be, Uncle George.

VOYNITSKY: Why are you cross?

SONYA: If you say another word, one of us will have to go home. You or I. . . .

ORLOVSKY (laughing aloud): What a character!

VOYNITSKY: Yes, a character indeed, I must say. ... (To SONYA) Give me your little paw! Please do! (Kissing her hand.) Peace and goodwill. ... I won’t do it again.

SCENE VII

The same and KHROUSCHOV (the Wood Demon)

KHROUSCHOV (coming out of the house): Why am I not a painter? What a wonderful group!

ORLOVSKY (joyously): My dear godson!

KHROUSCHOV: My congratulations to the new-born. How do you do, Julie? How fine you look to-day, Godpa!

(Kissing ORLOVSKY.) Sophie Alexandrovna .’. .

(Greeting the rest of the company.)

ZHELTOUKHIN: How can you be so late! Where have you been?

KHROUSCHOV: At a patient’s.

JULIE: The pie has gone cold.

KHROUSCHOV: It doesn’t matter, Julie, I’ll eat it cold.

Where shall I sit?

SONYA: Sit down here. . . .

(Pointing to a seat beside her.)

KHROUSCHOV: The weather is wonderful, and I have a ravenous appetite... Yes, I’ll have some vodka. . . .

(Drinking.) To the new-born! I’ll have this little pie. . . .

Julie, give it a kiss, it’ll taste better... (She kisses it.)

Merci!
 
How are you, godpa? I haven’t seen you for a long time.

ORLOVSKY: Yes, it is a long time. I’ve been abroad.

KHROUSCHOV: I heard about it . . . and envied you. And how are you, Fyodor?

FYODOR: All right, your prayers support us, like pillars..

KHROUSCHOV: How are your affairs?

FYODOR,: I must not grumble. I am having a good time.

Only, my dear fellow, there’s a lot of running to and fro.

Sickening! From here to the Caucasus, from the Caucasus back here — continuously on the move, until I’m dazed.

You know, I’ve got two estates there!

KHROUSCHOV: I know.

FYODOR: I am engaged in colonization and in catching tarantulas and scorpions. Business is going all right, but as regards “ my surging passions, keep still! “ — all is as it used to be.

KHROUSCHOV: You’re in love, of course?

FYODOR: On which account, Wood Demon, we must have a drink. (Drinking.) . . . Gentlemen, never fall in love with married women! My word, it’s better to be wounded in the shoulder and shot through the leg, like you obedient servant,

than to love a married woman... It’s such a misfortune

! . . .

SONYA: Is it hopeless?

FYODOR: Hopeless indeed! Hopeless! ... In this world there’s nothing hopeless. Hopeless, unhappy love, oh, ach! — all

this is just nonsense! One has only to will. ... If I will that my gun shall not miss fire, it won’t. If I will a woman to love me, she shall love me. Just so, Sonya, old chap! If I pick out a woman, I think it’s easier for her to jump to the moon than to get away from me.

SONYA: What a terrific fellow!

FYODOR: She won’t get away from me! I hardly have time to say three words to her before she’s already in my power... Yes. ... I have only to say to her: “ My lady,

whenever you look at the window you must remember me. I will it.” And she remembers me a thousand times a day.

Moreover, I bombard her every day with letters. . . .

ELENA ANDREYEVNA: Letters surely aren’t a safe method;

she may receive them, but she may not read them.

FYODOR: You think so? H’m I ... I have been living in this world for thirty-five years, and somehow I haven’t yet come across such phenomenal women as would have the courage not to open a letter.

ORLOVSKY (looking admiringly at hirn): See! My dear son, my beautiful son! I, too, was like that. Precisely, to a degree! Only that I was not in the war; but I drank and threw money about — terrible!

FYODOR: Misha, I do love her, seriously, hellishly. . . .

Were she only to agree, I would just give her everything and all. ... I would carry her to the Caucasus, to the mountains,

we should live like singing birds. ... I should guard her, Elena Andreyevna, like a faithful dog, and she would be to me as our marshal of nobility sings: “ Thou wilt be the queen of the universe, thou my dearest.” Oh, she does not know how very happy she could be!

KHROUSCHOV: And who’s that lucky woman?

FYODOR: If you know too much, you’ll age quickly. . . .

But enough about that. Now, let’s sing from a different opera. I remember, it’s about ten years ago — Lennie was still at school then — we were celebrating his birthday as we are now. I rode home — Sonya on my right arm, and Julie on my left, and both held on to my beard. Now, let’s drink the health of the friends of my youth, of Sonya and Julie!

DYADIN (laughing aloud): That is fascinating! That is fascinating!

FYODOR: Once, it was after the war, I was having drinks with a Turkish pasha in Trebizond. ... All at once he asks me —
 
—

DYADIN (interrupting): Let’s drink a toast to friendly relations. Vivat friendship! Here’s luck!

FYODOR: Stop, stop, stop! Sonya, I claim attention! I am having a bet, damn it! I am putting three hundred roubles on the table! Let’s go after lunch to play croquet,

and I bet that in one round I shall get through all the hoops and back.

SONYA: I accept the bet; only I haven’t got three hundred roubles.

FYODOR: If you lose, you are to sing to me forty times.

SONYA: Agreed.

DYADIN. That is fascinating! That is fascinating!

ELENA ANDREYEVNA (looking at the sky): What bird is that?

ZHELTOUKHIN: It is a hawk.

FYODOR: Friends, let’s drink the hawk’s health!

(SONYA laughs aloud.)

ORLOVSKY: Now, she has started. What’s the matter?

(KHROUSCHOV laughs aloud.)

ORLOVSKY: Why are you laughing?

MARIE VASSILIEVNA: Sophie! It is not right!

KHROUSCHOV: Oh, I am so sorry! . . . I’ll stop presently,

presently. . .,

ORLOVSKY: This is laughing without reason.

VOYNITSKY: Those two, you’ve only;o lift up your finger,

and they burst out laughing. Sonya! (Lifting his finger.)

Look now! . . .

KHROUSCHOV: Stop it! (Looking at his watch) Well, I have eaten and drunk, and now I must be off. It’s time I went.

SONYA: Where to?

KHROUSCHOV: To a patient. I’m as tired of my medical practice as of an unloved wife, or a long winter. . . .

SEREBRYAKOV: But, look here, medicine is your profession,

your work, so to say. . . .

VOYNITSKY (ironically): He has another profession. He digs peat on his estate.

SEREBRYAKOV: What?

VOYNITSKY: Peat! A mining engineer has calculated with absolute certainty that there is peat on his land worth seven hundred and twenty thousand roubles. It isn’t a joke.

KHROUSCHOV: I don’t dig peat for the sake of money.

VOYNITSKY: Why do you dig it then?

KHROUSCHOV: In order that you should not cut down forests.

VOYNITSKY: Why not cut them? To hear you, one might think that forests only existed for the courtships of youths and maidens.

KHROUSCHOV: I never said anything of the sort.

VOYNITSKY: What I have had the honour of hearing you say up to now in defence of forests is all antiquated, not serious, and tendentious. Pray forgive me. I say this not without grounds, I know almost by heart all your arguments in defence... For instance... (Raising the tone of his voice and gesticulating, as though imitating KHROUSCHOV.)

You men are destroying the forests, but they adorn the earth,

they teach man to understand beauty and inspire him with a sense of majesty. Forests soften harsh climates. Where the climate is milder, there man exerts less effort in his struggle with nature, and therefore man there is gentler and kindlier.

In countries with a mild climate people are handsome, alert,

easily excited, their speech is elegant, their movements graceful.

Arts and science flourish there, their philosophy is not gloomy, their relations to women are full of fine courtesy.

And so on and so on... All this is fine, but so unconvincing

that you must allow me to go on burning wood in the fireplaces and building wooden barns.

KHROUSCHOV: Cut forests, when it is a matter of urgency,

you may, but it is time to stop destroying them. Every Russian forest is cracking under the axe, millions of trees are perishing, the abodes of beasts and birds are being ravaged,

rivers are becoming shallow and drying up, wonderful landscapes

are disappearing without leaving a trace; and all this because lazy man has not got the sense to stoop, to pick up fuel from the ground. One must be a barbarian (pointing to the trees) to burn that beauty in the fireplace, to destroy what we cannot create. Understanding and creative power have been granted to man to multiply what has been given him,

but hitherto he has not created, he has only destroyed. The forests grow less and less, the rivers dry up, wild birds disappear,

the climate is spoilt, and every day the earth grows poorer and uglier. You look at me ironically, and all I am saying seems to you antiquated and not serious, but when I pass by woods belonging to the peasants, woods which I have saved from being cut down, or when I hear the rustling of the young forest, which I have planted with my own hands, I realize that the climate is to a certain extent also in my power;