Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (445 page)

ANDREY. Rubbish.
[He reads]
Were you ever in Moscow?

FERAPONT.
[After a pause]
No. God did not lead me there.
[Pause]
Shall I go?

ANDREY. You may go. Good-bye.
[FERAPONT goes]
Good-bye.
[Reads]
You can come to-morrow and fetch these documents.... Go along....
[Pause]
He’s gone.
[A ring]
Yes, yes.... [Stretches himself and slowly goes into his own room.]

[Behind the scene the nurse is singing a lullaby to the child. MASHA and VERSHININ come in. While they talk, a maidservant lights candles and a lamp.]

MASHA. I don’t know.
[Pause]
I don’t know. Of course, habit counts for a great deal. After father’s death, for instance, it took us a long time to get used to the absence of orderlies. But, apart from habit, it seems to me in all fairness that, however it may be in other towns, the best and most-educated people are army men.

VERSHININ. I’m thirsty. I should like some tea.

MASHA.
[Glancing at her watch]
They’ll bring some soon. I was given in marriage when I was eighteen, and I was afraid of my husband because he was a teacher and I’d only just left school. He then seemed to me frightfully wise and learned and important. And now, unfortunately, that has changed.

VERSHININ. Yes... yes.

MASHA. I don’t speak of my husband, I’ve grown used to him, but civilians in general are so often coarse, impolite, uneducated. Their rudeness offends me, it angers me. I suffer when I see that a man isn’t quite sufficiently refined, or delicate, or polite. I simply suffer agonies when I happen to be among schoolmasters, my husband’s colleagues.

VERSHININ. Yes.... It seems to me that civilians and army men are equally interesting, in this town, at any rate. It’s all the same! If you listen to a member of the local intelligentsia, whether to civilian or military, he will tell you that he’s sick of his wife, sick of his house, sick of his estate, sick of his horses.... We Russians are extremely gifted in the direction of thinking on an exalted plane, but, tell me, why do we aim so low in real life? Why?

MASHA. Why?

VERSHININ. Why is a Russian sick of his children, sick of his wife? And why are his wife and children sick of him?

MASHA. You’re a little downhearted to-day.

VERSHININ. Perhaps I am. I haven’t had any dinner, I’ve had nothing since the morning. My daughter is a little unwell, and when my girls are ill, I get very anxious and my conscience tortures me because they have such a mother. Oh, if you had seen her to-day! What a trivial personality! We began quarrelling at seven in the morning and at nine I slammed the door and went out.
[Pause]
I never speak of her, it’s strange that I bear my complaints to you alone.
[Kisses her hand]
Don’t be angry with me. I haven’t anybody but you, nobody at all....
[Pause.]

MASHA. What a noise in the oven. Just before father’s death there was a noise in the pipe, just like that.

VERSHININ. Are you superstitious?

MASHA. Yes.

VERSHININ. That’s strange.
[Kisses her hand]
You are a splendid, wonderful woman. Splendid, wonderful! It is dark here, but I see your sparkling eyes.

MASHA.
[Sits on another chair]
There is more light here.

VERSHININ. I love you, love you, love you... I love your eyes, your movements, I dream of them.... Splendid, wonderful woman!

MASHA.
[Laughing]
When you talk to me like that, I laugh; I don’t know why, for I’m afraid. Don’t repeat it, please....
[In an undertone]
No, go on, it’s all the same to me.... [Covers her face with her hands] Somebody’s coming, let’s talk about something else.

[IRINA and TUZENBACH come in through the dining-room.]

TUZENBACH. My surname is really triple. I am called Baron Tuzenbach-Krone-Altschauer, but I am Russian and Orthodox, the same as you. There is very little German left in me, unless perhaps it is the patience and the obstinacy with which I bore you. I see you home every night.

IRINA. How tired I am!

TUZENBACH. And I’ll come to the telegraph office to see you home every day for ten or twenty years, until you drive me away. [He sees MASHA and VERSHININ; joyfully] Is that you? How do you do.

IRINA. Well, I am home at last.
[To MASHA]
A lady came to-day to telegraph to her brother in Saratov that her son died to-day, and she couldn’t remember the address anyhow. So she sent the telegram without an address, just to Saratov. She was crying. And for some reason or other I was rude to her. “I’ve no time,” I said. It was so stupid. Are the entertainers coming to-night?

MASHA. Yes.

IRINA.
[Sitting down in an armchair]
I want a rest. I am tired.

TUZENBACH.
[Smiling]
When you come home from your work you seem so young, and so unfortunate....
[Pause.]

IRINA. I am tired. No, I don’t like the telegraph office, I don’t like it.

MASHA. You’ve grown thinner....
[Whistles a little]
And you look younger, and your face has become like a boy’s.

TUZENBACH. That’s the way she does her hair.

IRINA. I must find another job, this one won’t do for me. What I wanted, what I hoped to get, just that is lacking here. Labour without poetry, without ideas....
[A knock on the floor]
The doctor is knocking.
[To TUZENBACH]
Will you knock, dear. I can’t... I’m tired....
[TUZENBACH knocks]
He’ll come in a minute. Something ought to be done. Yesterday the doctor and Andrey played cards at the club and lost money. Andrey seems to have lost 200 roubles.

MASHA.
[With indifference]
What can we do now?

IRINA. He lost money a fortnight ago, he lost money in December. Perhaps if he lost everything we should go away from this town. Oh, my God, I dream of Moscow every night. I’m just like a lunatic.
[Laughs]
We go there in June, and before June there’s still... February, March, April, May... nearly half a year!

MASHA. Only Natasha mustn’t get to know of these losses.

IRINA. I expect it will be all the same to her.

[CHEBUTIKIN, who has only just got out of bed — he was resting after dinner — comes into the dining-room and combs his beard. He then sits by the table and takes a newspaper from his pocket.]

MASHA. Here he is.... Has he paid his rent?

IRINA.
[Laughs]
No. He’s been here eight months and hasn’t paid a copeck. Seems to have forgotten.

MASHA.
[Laughs]
What dignity in his pose!
[They all laugh. A pause.]

IRINA. Why are you so silent, Alexander Ignateyevitch?

VERSHININ. I don’t know. I want some tea. Half my life for a tumbler of tea: I haven’t had anything since morning.

CHEBUTIKIN. Irina Sergeyevna!

IRINA. What is it?

CHEBUTIKIN. Please come here, Venez ici. [IRINA goes and sits by the table] I can’t do without you. [IRINA begins to play patience.]

VERSHININ. Well, if we can’t have any tea, let’s philosophize, at any rate.

TUZENBACH. Yes, let’s. About what?

VERSHININ. About what? Let us meditate... about life as it will be after our time; for example, in two or three hundred years.

TUZENBACH. Well? After our time people will fly about in balloons, the cut of one’s coat will change, perhaps they’ll discover a sixth sense and develop it, but life will remain the same, laborious, mysterious, and happy. And in a thousand years’ time, people will still be sighing: “Life is hard!” — and at the same time they’ll be just as afraid of death, and unwilling to meet it, as we are.

VERSHININ.
[Thoughtfully]
How can I put it? It seems to me that everything on earth must change, little by little, and is already changing under our very eyes. After two or three hundred years, after a thousand — the actual time doesn’t matter — a new and happy age will begin. We, of course, shall not take part in it, but we live and work and even suffer to-day that it should come. We create it — and in that one object is our destiny and, if you like, our happiness.

[MASHA laughs softly.]

TUZENBACH. What is it?

MASHA. I don’t know. I’ve been laughing all day, ever since morning.

VERSHININ. I finished my education at the same point as you, I have not studied at universities; I read a lot, but I cannot choose my books and perhaps what I read is not at all what I should, but the longer I love, the more I want to know. My hair is turning white, I am nearly an old man now, but I know so little, oh, so little! But I think I know the things that matter most, and that are most real. I know them well. And I wish I could make you understand that there is no happiness for us, that there should not and cannot be.... We must only work and work, and happiness is only for our distant posterity.
[Pause]
If not for me, then for the descendants of my descendants.

[FEDOTIK and RODE come into the dining-room; they sit and sing softly, strumming on a guitar.]

TUZENBACH. According to you, one should not even think about happiness! But suppose I am happy!

VERSHININ. No.

TUZENBACH.
[Moves his hands and laughs]
We do not seem to understand each other. How can I convince you? [MASHA laughs quietly, TUZENBACH continues, pointing at her] Yes, laugh!
[To VERSHININ]
Not only after two or three centuries, but in a million years, life will still be as it was; life does not change, it remains for ever, following its own laws which do not concern us, or which, at any rate, you will never find out. Migrant birds, cranes for example, fly and fly, and whatever thoughts, high or low, enter their heads, they will still fly and not know why or where. They fly and will continue to fly, whatever philosophers come to life among them; they may philosophize as much as they like, only they will fly....

MASHA. Still, is there a meaning?

TUZENBACH. A meaning.... Now the snow is falling. What meaning?
[Pause.]

MASHA. It seems to me that a man must have faith, or must search for a faith, or his life will be empty, empty.... To live and not to know why the cranes fly, why babies are born, why there are stars in the sky.... Either you must know why you live, or everything is trivial, not worth a straw.
[A pause.]

VERSHININ. Still, I am sorry that my youth has gone.

MASHA. Gogol says: life in this world is a dull matter, my masters!

TUZENBACH. And I say it’s difficult to argue with you, my masters! Hang it all.