Plays

by Anton Chekhov

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: When you speak to me of your love, I somehow go numb and don’t know what to say. I’m sorry, I can’t say anything to you. [Moves towards door.] Goodnight.

  VOYNITSKY [blocking her way]: And if you knew how I suffer from the thought that next to me in this house another life is going to waste — your life! What are you waiting for? What cursed philosophy is stopping you? You must understand, understand ...

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA [looking hard at him]: Ivan Petrovich, you are drunk!

  VOYNITSKY: It’s possible ...

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: Where’s the Doctor?

  VOYNITSKY: He’s there ... spending the night in my room. It’s possible ... Anything is possible!

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: So you’ve been drinking again today? Why?

  VOYNITSKY: At least it offers one something like life ... Don’t stop me, Hélène!

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: You never used to drink, and you never used to talk so much ... Go to bed! I’m bored with you.

  VOYNITSKY [kissing her hand]: My darling ... wonderful woman!

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA [angrily]: Leave me alone! It’s disgusting. [Goes out.]

  VOYNITSKY [alone]: She’s gone ...

  [A pause.]

  I used to meet her ten years ago at my sister’s. She was seventeen then and I was thirty-seven. Why didn’t I fall in love with her then and propose to her? I could have — quite easily! And she would now be my wife ... Yes ... We would both now have been woken by the storm, she would be frightened by the thunder and I would hold her in my arms and whisper, ‘Don’t be afraid, I’m here.’ Oh, wonderful thoughts, so good I’m even laughing ... but, God, my thoughts are confused in my head ... Why am I old? Why doesn’t she understand me? Her rhetoric, her lazy moral strictures, her pointless, lazy thinking about the end of the world — I find all that deeply hateful.

  [A pause.]

  How deceived I was! I worshipped the Professor, that pathetic victim of gout, I worked for him like an ox! Sonya and I squeezed the last juice out of this estate; we traded like kulaks6 in vegetable oil and dried peas and curd cheese, we ourselves hardly had enough to eat in order to make the pennies and kopecks into thousands and send them to him. I was proud of him and his scholarship, I lived and breathed him! Every word he wrote and uttered seemed to me to come from genius ... God, and now? Here he is in retirement, and now one can see the sum total of his life: not a single page of his labours will survive him, he’s completely unknown, he’s nothing! A soap bubble! I was deceived ... I see it — deeply deceived ...

  [Enter ASTROV in his coat, without waistcoat and tie; tipsy; followed by TELEGIN with a guitar.]

  ASTROV: Play!

  TELEGIN: Everyone’s asleep!

  ASTROV: Play!

  [TELEGIN plays quietly.]

  [To Voynitsky] Are you alone here? No ladies? [Puts his arms akimbo and sings softly] ‘No home, no stove for a bed, where’s a man to lay his head ...’ The storm woke me. That’s real rain. What time is it?

  VOYNITSKY: God only knows.

  ASTROV: I thought I heard Yelena Andreyevna’s voice.

  VOYNITSKY: She was in here just now.

  ASTROV: A gorgeous woman. [Inspects the bottles on the table.] Medicines. What a lot of prescriptions! From Kharkov and Moscow and Tula ... He’s plagued every city with his gout. Is he ill or malingering?

  VOYNITSKY: He’s ill.

  [A pause.]

  ASTROV: Why are you so gloomy today? Are you sorry for the Professor or something?

  VOYNITSKY: Leave me alone.

  ASTROV: Or perhaps you’re in love with the Professor’s wife?

  VOYNITSKY: She is my good friend.

  ASTROV: Really?

  VOYNITSKY: What does that ‘really’ mean?

  ASTROV: A woman can be a man’s good friend only in the following sequence of events: first friend, then mistress, then good friend.

  VOYNITSKY: A coarse philosophy.

  ASTROV: What? Yes ... I must admit, I am becoming coarse. You see, I’m drunk too. I usually get this drunk once a month. When I’m in this condition, I become extremely aggressive and ambitious. I can do anything then! I take on the most difficult operations and do them perfectly; I draw up the grandest plans for the future; I don’t then think myself an eccentric, and I can believe I am bringing colossal benefits to mankind — colossal! Also at these times I have my own system of philosophy, and all of you, my friends, appear to me as just so many insects — microbes. [To Telegin] Waffle, play something!

  TELEGIN: For you, dear fellow, I’d be glad to, with all my heart, but you must understand — people are sleeping in this house!

  ASTROV: Play!

  [TELEGIN plays quietly.]

  We need a drink. Come on, I think we’ve still got some brandy left in there. And when it gets light, we’ll drive to my house. Do you loik the idea? I have an assistant who never says ‘like’ but ‘loik’. A terrible crook. So do you loik it? [Seeing SONYA come in.] I’m sorry, I haven’t got a tie on. [Quickly goes out, followed by TELEGIN.]

  SONYA: Uncle Vanya, you’ve got drunk with the doctor again. All boys together. Well, he’s always like that, but why must you be? At your age it doesn’t suit you at all ...

  VOYNITSKY: Age is neither here nor there. When one has no real life, one lives by mirages. It’s still better than nothing.

  SONYA: The hay is all cut, it rains every day, everything is rotting — and you’re occupied with mirages. You’ve completely given up the estate ... I work alone, I’ve worn out my strength ... [Frightened] Uncle, you have tears in your eyes!

  VOYNITSKY: Tears? There’s nothing ... nonsense ... You just looked at me like your dead mother. My darling ... [Hungrily kisses her hands and face.] My sister ... my dear sister ... where is she now? If she knew! Oh, if she only knew!

  SONYA: What? Uncle, knew what?

  VOYNITSKY: It’s not easy, not right ... It’s nothing ... Later ... Nothing ... I’m going ... [Exit.]

  SONYA [knocking on the door]: Mikhail Lvovich! Are you awake? Just for a minute!

  ASTROV [through the door]: Coming! [After a moment he enters, now wearing a waistcoat and tie.] What do you want?

  SONYA: Drink yourself, if it doesn’t revolt you, but I beg you, don’t let my uncle drink. It’s bad for him.

  ASTROV: All right. We won’t drink any more.

  [A pause.]

  I’m just going home. All signed and sealed. The sun’ll be up by the time they harness the horses.

  SONYA: It’s raining. Wait till morning.

  ASTROV: The storm is passing us by, we’ll only get the edge of it. I’ll go. And please don’t ask me over for your father again. I tell him it’s gout, but he says rheumatism; I ask him to lie down, he sits up. And today he wouldn’t speak to me at all.

  SONYA: He’s been spoilt. [Looks in the sideboard.] Would you like something to eat?

  ASTROV: Why not, give me something.

  SONYA: I like to have a snack at night. I think there’s something in the sideboard. People say he had a lot of success with women in his life, and the ladies pampered him. Have some cheese.

  [They both stand by the sideboard and eat.]

  ASTROV: I haven’t had anything to eat today, I’ve only been drinking. Your father has a difficult character. [Gets a bottle out of the sideboard.] May I? [Drinks down a glass.] There’s no one here and I can speak frankly. You know, I think I wouldn’t last one month in this house, I’d suffocate in this atmosphere ... Your father taken up with his gout and books, Uncle Vanya with his depression, your grandmother, finally your stepmother ...

  SONYA: What about my stepmother?

  ASTROV: A human being should be beautiful all through: face and clothes and spirit and thoughts. She is beautiful, no question about that, but ... she just eats, sleeps, walks, enchants us all with her beauty — and that’s all. She has no responsibilities, others work for her ... It’s true, isn’t it? And an idle life can’t be a virtuous one.

  [A pause.]


  But perhaps I’m judging too harshly. Like your Uncle Vanya I’m dissatisfied with life, and we’re both becoming grouches.

  SONYA: So you don’t like life?

  ASTROV: I love life in general, but I can’t stand our narrow Russian provincial life, and I despise it with all the strength of my soul. And as far as my own personal life is concerned, Lord, there’s really nothing good there. You know, when you walk in the forest on a dark night and if you then see a tiny light in the distance, you don’t notice exhaustion or darkness or the brambles hitting you in the face. As you know I work harder than anyone in the district, I am unremittingly knocked about by fate, from time to time I suffer unbearably, but there’s no tiny light in the distance for me. I now expect nothing for myself, I don’t love humanity ... It’s a long time since I loved anyone.

  SONYA: Anyone?

  ASTROV: Anyone. I only feel a certain affection for your Nyanya — for old times’ sake. The muzhiks are dull, uneducated, live in squalor, and it’s difficult to get on with the intelligentsia. They’re exhausting. All of them, all our good friends, have petty thoughts and petty feelings, and they see no further than the end of their nose — they’re simply stupid. And those who are a bit cleverer, a bit more significant, are hysterics, eaten up by analysis and introspection ... They whine and hate and utter their morbid gossip, they sidle up to a man and look at him sideways and decide ‘Oh, he’s a psychopath!’ or ‘He’s a phrasemonger!’ And when they don’t know what label to stick to my forehead, they say ‘He’s a strange man, strange!’ I love forests — that’s strange; I don’t eat meat — that’s strange too. They have no direct, clean, free relationship with nature and with people ... None, none! [He is about to drink.]

  SONYA [stopping him]: No, please, I beg you, don’t drink any more.

  ASTROV: Why?

  SONYA: It really doesn’t suit you. You’re cultured, you have such a gentle voice ... More than that, unlike anyone I know, you are a fine man. Why do you want to be like ordinary men who drink and play cards? Don‘t, I beg you! You’re always saying that people don’t create but only destroy what is given them from on high. Why, why do you destroy yourself? You mustn’t, you mustn’t, I beg, I entreat you.

  ASTROV [giving her his hand]: I won’t drink any more.

  SONYA: Give me your word.

  ASTROV: My word of honour.

  SONYA [shaking his hand firmly]: Thank you!

  ASTROV: Basta.7I’ve sobered up. You see, I am now completely sober and will stay so to the end of my days. [Looks at his watch.] And so we’ll continue. This is what I say: my time is now past, it’s late for me ... I am old, I’ve worked myself to the bone, I’ve coarsened, all my feelings are blunted and I don’t think now I could become attached to a human being. I love no one and ... now I won’t love. What still excites me is beauty. I am not indifferent to that. I think that if Yelena Andreyevna wanted to, she could turn my head in a day ... But that’s not love, that’s not affection ... [Covers his eyes with a hand and shudders.]

  SONYA: What’s the matter?

  ASTROV: Don’t worry ... During Lent one of my patients died under chloroform.

  SONYA: It’s time to forget about that.

  [A pause.]

  Tell me, Mikhail Lvovich ... If I had a friend or a younger sister and if you learnt that she ... well, let’s say, loved you, how would you react to that?

  ASTROV [shrugging]: I don’t know. I suppose, not at all. I would let her know that I could not love her ... but my thoughts are elsewhere. If I’m really going to leave, it’s now time. Goodbye, my dear, otherwise we’ll be at it till morning. [Shakes her hand.] I’ll go out through the drawing-room if I may, otherwise I’m afraid your uncle will keep me. [Goes out.]

  SONYA [alone]: He said nothing to me ... His heart and soul are still hidden from me, but why do I feel so happy? [Laughs with happiness.] I said to him, you are cultured, noble, you have such a gentle voice ... Did that come out wrong? His voice trembles, caresses ... I can feel it in the air. But when I talked to him about a younger sister, he didn’t understand. [Wringing her hands.] Oh how I hate being plain! It’s dreadful! And I know I’m plain, I know it, I know it ... Last Sunday when we were leaving church, I heard people talking about me, and one woman said, ‘She’s kind and generous, but it’s a pity that she’s so plain.’ Plain ...

  [Enter YELENA ANDREYEVNA.]

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA [opening the window]: The storm has passed. What wonderful air!

  [A pause.]

  Where’s the Doctor?

  SONYA: He’s gone.

  [A pause.]

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: Sophie.

  SONYA: What?

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: How long are you going to be offended with me? We’ve done no harm to one another. Why be enemies? Let’s stop it ...

  SONYA: I wanted to myself... [Hugs her.] Let’s stop being angry.

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: That’s wonderful.

  [Both are emotional.]

  SONYA: Has Papa gone to bed?

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: No, he’s sitting in the drawing-room ... We don’t speak to one another for weeks at a time, God knows why ... [Seeing the sideboard is open.] What’s that?

  SONYA: Mikhail Lvovich had supper.

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: And there’s some wine ... Let’s drink and be friends.

  SONYA: Let’s.

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: From one glass ... [Pours.] That’s better. So, it’s ty?8

  SONYA: Ty.

  [They drink and kiss.]

  I’ve wanted to make up for a long time, but I was always sort of ashamed ... [Cries.]

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: Why are you crying?

  SONYA: It’s nothing, I just am.

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: There, there ... [Cries.] You funny girl, I’ve started crying too ...

  [A pause.]

  You were angry with me because you thought I married your father for ulterior motives ... If you believe oaths, then I swear to you that I married him for love. I was attracted to this famous scholar. My love was not real, it was artificial, but I thought it was real then. I’m not to blame. But from the day of our marriage you never stopped punishing me with your clever, suspicious eyes.

  SONYA: Pax, pax. Let’s forget.

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: You mustn’t look at people like that — it doesn’t suit you. You must trust everyone, otherwise life is impossible.

  [A pause.]

  SONYA: Tell me honestly, as a friend ... Are you happy?

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: No.

  SONYA: I knew it. One more question. Tell me frankly — would you like to have had a young husband?

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: What a little girl you are still. Of course I would. [Laughs.] Well, ask me something else, ask ...

  SONYA: Do you find the Doctor attractive?

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: Yes, very.

  SONYA [laughing]: I’ve got a stupid face ... don’t you think? He’s gone and I still hear his voice and his footsteps, and I look at the dark window and I see his face there. Let me have my say ... But I can’t talk so loudly, I’m ashamed. Let’s go to my room and talk there. Do you find me silly? Admit it ... Say something to me about him ...

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: What?

  SONYA: He’s clever. He knows how to do everything, he’s able to do everything ... He heals the sick and he plants trees ...

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: It’s not a question of trees, or medicine ... You see, my dear, it’s talent! And do you know what talent means? Courage, a free mind, a broad sweep ... He plants a little tree and he can foretell what will come of it in a thousand years, he’s already dreaming of the happiness of mankind. Such men are rare, to be loved ... He drinks, he’s often a bit coarse — but what harm in that? A man with talent in Russia can’t be nice and clean. Think yourself what kind of life this doctor has! Impassable mud on the roads, frosts, snow-storms, huge distances, crude and primitive people, everywhere poverty, disease, and in these circumstances it’s hard for someone struggling and fighting
from day to day to get to forty and remain nice and sober ... [Kisses Sonya.] I wish you happiness with all my heart, you deserve it ... [Gets up.] But I’m a boring incidental character ... In my music and in my husband’s house, in all my romances — in a word, in everything, I’ve always just been an incidental character. In truth, Sonya, if I think about it, I’m very, very unhappy! [In her emotion, walks about the stage.] There’s no happiness for me on this earth. None! Why are you laughing?

  SONYA [laughing, covering her face]: I’m so happy ... so happy!

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: I want to play the piano ... to play something now.

  SONYA: Play. [Embraces her.] I can’t sleep ... Play!

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: In a minute. Your father isn’t asleep. When he’s ill, music irritates him. Go and ask him. If he doesn’t mind, I’ll play. Go.

  SONYA: I’m going. [Goes out.]

  [The night-watchman knocks in the garden.]

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: I haven’t played for years. I shall play and cry, cry like an idiot. [Through the window] Is that you knocking, Yefim?

  WATCHMAN’S VOICE: Yes, it’s me!

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: Don’t knock, the master’s not well.

  WATCHMAN’S VOICE: I’ll go now. [Whistles.] Hey, come on, Zhuchka, Malchik!9 Zhuchka!