Plays

by Anton Chekhov

  FERAPONT: I don’t really know ... I don’t hear very well ...

  ANDREY: If your hearing was all right, then perhaps I wouldn’t be talking to you. I need to talk to someone but my wife doesn’t understand me, and for some reason I’m afraid of my sisters, I’m afraid they’ll laugh at me or make me feel ashamed ... I don’t drink, I don’t like taverns, but, my dear old chap, with what pleasure I’d sit down now in Moscow at Testov’s or the Bolshoy Moskovsky.2

  FERAPONT: And in Moscow, a contractor was telling us the other day at the Council, some merchants were eating pancakes; one of them ate forty pancakes and died of it. Forty or fifty. I can’t remember.

  ANDREY: You’re sitting in Moscow, in a big restaurant, you don’t know anybody and nobody knows you, and at the same time you don’t feel a stranger. Whereas here you know everybody and everybody knows you, but you’re a stranger, a stranger ... A stranger and lonely ...

  FERAPONT: What?

  [A pause.]

  And the same contractor said - maybe he’s lying - that they’re stretching a rope across the whole of Moscow.

  ANDREY: What for?

  FERAPONT: I don’t know. That’s what the contractor said.

  ANDREY: What nonsense. [Reads his book.] Have you ever been to Moscow?

  FERAPONT [after a pause]: I haven’t. It hasn’t been God’s will.

  [A pause.]

  Can I go?

  ANDREY: Yes, you can. Goodbye.

  [FERAPONT goes out.]

  Goodbye. [Reading.] Come tomorrow morning and pick up the papers from here ... Off you go ...

  [A pause.]

  He’s gone.

  [A bell.]

  Yes, things to do ... [Stretches and unhurriedly goes to his own room.]

  [Offstage a nursemaid is singing, rocking the baby to sleep. Enter MASHA and VERSHININ. While they talk, a maid lights the lamp and candles.]

  MASHA: I don’t know.

  [A pause.]

  I don’t know. Of course, habit counts for a lot. For instance, after our father’s death it took us a long time to get accustomed to not having any orderlies to serve us. But apart from habit I think that what I said is quite right. Perhaps in other places it’s different, but in our town the most decent, the finest, the most educated people are in the army.

  VERSHININ: I’m thirsty. I’d like some tea.

  MASHA [glancing at her watch]: They’ll serve it soon. I was married when I was eighteen and I was frightened of my husband because he was a schoolmaster and I’d barely finished school. He seemed to me then terribly learned, clever and important. But now, unfortunately, it’s rather different.

  VERSHININ: I see ... yes.

  MASHA: I don’t mean my husband, I’ve become accustomed to him, but among civilians generally there are so many coarse, unpleasant, uneducated people. Coarseness upsets and offends me, I suffer when I see a man without refinement, without gentleness and courtesy. When I happen to be among the schoolmasters who are my husband’s colleagues, I simply suffer.

  VERSHININ: Yes ... But I think whether you’re talking about civilians or soldiers, they’re equally uninteresting, at any rate in this town. No difference! If you listen to an educated man in this town, civilian or soldier, he’s got problems with his wife, problems with his house, he’s got problems with his estate, problems with his horses ... It’s very typical of the Russian to have elevated thoughts, but tell me why he aims so low in life? Why?

  MASHA: Why?

  VERSHININ: Why does he have problems with his children, problems with his wife? And why do his wife and children have problems with him?

  MASHA: You’re not in a very good mood today.

  VERSHININ: Maybe not. I’ve had no dinner today. I haven’t had anything to eat since the morning. One of my daughters is a bit unwell, and when my little girls are ill, then I become worried, I feel guilty that their mother is like that. Oh, if you had seen her today! What a worthless person she is! We began to quarrel at seven in the morning, and at nine I slammed the door and went out.

  [A pause.]

  I never speak about this and, it’s strange, I’m complaining just to you alone. [Kisses her hand.] Don’t be angry with me. But for you I have no one, no one ...

  [A pause.]

  MASHA: What a noise there is in the stove. Not long before Father’s death there was a howling in the chimney. Just like that.

  VERSHININ : Are you superstitious?

  MASHA: Yes.

  VERSHiNiN : That’s strange. [Kisses her hand.] You’re a splendid, wonderful woman. Splendid, wonderful! It’s dark in here but I can see your eyes shining ...

  MASHA [sitting down in another chair]: It’s lighter over here ...

  VERSHININ: I love, I love, I love ... I love your eyes, your movements, which I see in my dreams ... Splendid, wonderful woman!

  MASHA [laughing quietly]: When you talk to me like that, then for some reason I laugh, although I’m frightened. Don’t say it again, I beg you ... [In a low voice] Or else go on talking, it’s all the same to me ... [Covers her face with her hands.] It’s all the same to me ... Someone is coming in here, talk about something else ...

  [Enter IRINA and TUZENBAKH, through the hall.]

  TUZENBAKH: I have a triple-barrelled name. My name is Baron Tuzenbakh-Krone-Altschauer, but I am Russian and Orthodox like you. There’s little of the German left in me except perhaps the patience and stubbornness with which I bore you ... I see you home every evening.

  IRINA: I’m so tired!

  TUZENBAKH: And every day I’ll come to the Telegraph Office and see you home, and I will do so for ten or twenty years until you chase me away ... [Seeing Irina and Vershinin, happily] Are you here? Good evening.

  IRINA: Now I’m home, at last. [To Masha] Just now a lady came and sent a telegram to her brother in Saratov to say that her son died today, and she just couldn’t remember the address. In the end she sent it without an address, simply to Saratov. She was crying. And I was rude to her for no reason. ‘I’ve no time,’ I said. It sounded so stupid. Aren’t the mummers coming today?

  MASHA: Yes.

  IRINA [sitting down in an armchair] : A rest. I’m tired.

  TUZENBAKH [with a smile] : When you come home from work you look so small, such an unhappy little thing ...

  [A pause.]

  IRINA: I’m tired. No, I don’t like the Telegraph Office, I don’t like it.

  MASHA: You’ve become thinner ... [Whistles.] And you look younger and your face looks like a boy’s ...

  TUZENBAKH: That’s the way she’s done her hair.

  IRINA: I must find another job, this one doesn’t suit me. What I wanted, what I dreamed of, it definitely does not have. It’s work with no poetry, no thinking ...

  [A knock on the floor from below.]

  The Doctor’s knocking. [To Tuzenbakh] Give a knock, dear friend ... I can’t ... I’m tired.

  [TUZENBAKH knocks on the floor.]

  He’ll come up right away. We must do something. Yesterday the Doctor and our Andrey were in the Club and lost again. They say Andrey lost two hundred roubles.

  MASHA [indiferently]: Well, what can we do about it?

  IRINA : He lost two weeks ago, he lost at the beginning of December. I wish he’d be quick and lose everything, perhaps we’d leave this town. Lord God in heaven, I dream of Moscow every night, I’m just like a madwoman. [Laughs.] We’re moving there in June, and until June there’s still ... February, March, April, May ... almost half a year!

  MASHA: We must only see Natasha doesn’t somehow hear of the losses.

  IRINA: I don’t think she cares.

  [CHEBUTYKIN, having only just got out of bed — he has had a rest after dinner - comes into the hall and combs his beard, then sits down at the table and takes a newspaper from his pocket.]

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

  IRINA [laughing]: No. Not a kopeck in eight months. He’s obviously forgotten.

  MASHA [laughing] : How important he loo
ks sitting there!

  [Everyone laughs; a pause.]

  IRINA: Why aren’t you saying anything, Aleksandr Ignatyevich?

  VERSHININ: I don’t know. I want some tea. Half my life for a glass of tea! I haven’t had anything to eat since the morning ...

  CHEBUTYKIN: Irina Sergeyevna!

  IRINA: What is it?

  CHEBUTYKIN: Come here. Venez ici.3

  [IRINA goesand sits down at the table.]

  I can’t be without you.

  [IRINA lays out a game of patience.]

  VERSHININ: Well? If they aren’t serving tea, then at least let’s talk a little philosophy.

  TUZENBAKH: Let’s. What shall we talk about?

  VERSHININ: What about? Let’s talk about our dreams ... for example, about the life which will come after us, two or three hundred years from now.

  TUZENBAKH: Why not. After us men will fly in hot-air balloons, and jackets will change, and they’ll discover, maybe, a sixth sense and develop it, but life will remain the same, difficult and full of secrets and happy. And in a thousand years man will still sigh, ‘Ah, life is hard!’ - and at the same time he will, as now, be afraid and not want to die.

  VERSHININ [after some thought]: What shall I say to you? I think that everything on earth must gradually change, and already is changing before our eyes. In two or three hundred or even a thousand years — the point isn’t in the precise period - a new, happy life will dawn. Of course we won’t take part in that life, but we are living for it now, working, yes, suffering, we are creating that life - and in this alone lies the goal of our existence and, if you like, our happiness.

  [MASHA laughs quietly.]

  TUZENBAKH: What’s the matter with you?

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

  VERSHININ: I went to the same cadet school as you, I didn’t go on to the military academy; I read a lot but I don’t know how to choose books and maybe I don’t read quite what I ought to, but all the same the longer I live, the more I want to know. My hair is getting grey, I’m now nearly an old man, but I know very little, oh so little! But still I think I know, and know very well, what is most important and real. And how I would like to prove to you that for us there’s no happiness, there can’t be and there won’t be ... We must just work and work, and happiness is something for our remote descendants.

  [A pause.]

  If I won’t be happy, at least the descendants of my descendants will be.

  [FEDOTIK and RODE appear in the hall; they sit down and sing softly, playing the guitar.]

  TUZENBAKH: In your view we shouldn’t even dream of happiness. But what if I am happy?

  VERSHININ: No, you’re not.

  TUZENBAKH [throwing up his hands and laughing]: We clearly don’t understand one another. Well, how can I convince you?

  [MASHA laughs quietly.]

  [Wags a finger at her.] Go on, laugh! [To Vershinin] Life will remain the same as ever not just in two hundred or three hundred years but even in a million; life doesn’t change, it remains constant, following its own particular laws, which don’t concern you, or which at least you will never know. Migratory birds, cranes for example, fly and fly, and whatever thoughts, big or little, stray through their heads, they will still fly on without knowing why or where to. They fly and they will go on flying, whatever philosophers are born among them; and they can talk philosophy as much as they like, only they must fly on ...

  MASHA: But what’s the meaning of it?

  TUZENBAKH: Meaning ... Look, it’s snowing. What meaning is there in that?

  [A pause.]

  MASHA: I think human beings must have faith or must look for faith, otherwise our life is empty, empty ... To live and not to know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why there are stars in the sky ... You must know why you are alive, or else everything is nonsense, just blowing in the wind.

  [A pause.]

  VERSHININ: It’s still a pity one’s young days have gone ...

  MASHA: Gogol said, ‘Gentlemen, life on this earth is boring!’4

  TUZENBAKH: And I say, gentlemen, it’s tough to argue with you. So, enough of that ...

  CHEBUTYKIN [reading his newspaper]: Balzac was married in Berdichev.5

  [IRINA sings quietly.]

  I’ll even write that down in my notebook. [Makes a note.] Balzac was married in Berdichev. [Continuing to read his newspaper.]

  IRINA [laying out a game of patience, pensively]: Balzac was married in Berdichev.

  TUZENBAKH: The die is cast. You know, Mariya Sergeyevna, I’m retiring.

  MASHA: So I’ve heard. But I see nothing good in that. I don’t like civilians.

  TUZENBAKH: It doesn’t matter ... [Gets up.] I’m not good-looking, what kind of a soldier do I make? But it doesn’t really matter ... I shall work. Work for just one day in my life and come home in the evening, fall into bed with exhaustion and go to sleep right away. [Going out into the hall.] Workmen, I think, sleep soundly!

  FEDOTIK [to Irina]: I just bought you some coloured pencils at Pyzhikov’s in Moskovskaya. And this penknife ...

  IRINA: You’re used to treating me like a little girl, but you know I’m now grown up ... [Happily takes the pencils and knife.] How lovely!

  FEDOTIK: And I bought a knife for myself ... look ... one blade, a second blade, a third, that’s for scratching in your ears, that’s a little pair of scissors, that’s for cleaning your nails ...

  RODE [loudly]: Doctor, how old are you?

  CHEBUTYKIN: Me? Thirty-two.

  [Laughter.]

  FEDOTIK: I’ll show you another patience ... [Lays out a game of patience.]

  [The samovar is brought in; ANFISA stands by the samovar; after a little NATASHA comes in and also fusses round the table; SOLYONY comes in and after greeting the others sits down at the table.]

  VERSHININ: Goodness, what a wind!

  MASHA: Yes. I’m fed up with winter. I’ve now even forgotten what summer’s like.

  IRINA: The game will come out, I can see. We will be in Moscow.

  FEDOTIK: No, it won’t come out. Look, the eight was on the two of spades. [Laughs.] That means you won’t get to Moscow.

  CHEBUTYKIN [reading his newspaper]: Tsitsihar.6 Smallpox is raging there.

  ANFISA [going up to Masha]: Masha, come and have your tea, dear. [To Vershinin] Please come, Your Honour ... forgive me, sir, I’ve forgotten your name ...

  MASHA: Bring it here, Nyanya. I won’t go over there.

  IRINA: Nyanya!

  ANFISA: Co-o-oming!

  NATASHA [to Solyony]: Babies understand everything. ‘Good morning, Bobik,’ I said. ‘Good morning, darling.’ He gave me a special kind of look. You’re thinking it’s just the mother in me speaking, but no, no, I assure you! This is an exceptional child.

  SOLYONY: If that child were mine, I’d fry it in a pan and eat it up. [Goes with a glass of tea into the drawing-room and sits down in a corner.]

  NATASHA [covering her face with her hands]: What a rude, vulgar man!

  MASHA: Happy is the man who doesn’t notice whether it’s now summer or winter. I think that if I were in Moscow I wouldn’t mind about the weather ...

  VERSHININ: The other day I was reading the diary of a French minister, written in prison. The minister had been sent there over the Panama affair.7 With what delight, with what rapture he talks about the birds he sees from his prison window and which he never noticed before when he was a minister. Of course, now he’s been released, he doesn’t notice the birds, just as before. In the same way you too won’t notice Moscow when you’re living there. We have no happiness and it doesn’t exist, we only desire it.

  TUZENBAKH [taking a box from the table]: Where are the sweets?

  IRINA: Solyony’s eaten them.

  TUZENBAKH: All of them?

  ANFISA [serving tea]: There’s a letter for you, sir.

  VERSHININ: For me? [Takes the letter.] It’s from my daughter. [Reads.] Yes, of course .
.. Excuse me, Mariya Sergeyevna, I’ll go off quietly. I won’t have tea. [Gets up in a state of agitation.] These incidents are always happening ...

  MASHA: What is it? It’s not a secret, is it?

  VERSHININ [quietly]: My wife has taken poison again. I must go. I’ll go out without anyone noticing. All this is terribly unpleasant. [Kisses Masha’s hand.] My dear, you fine, good woman ... I’ll go out here very quietly ... [Exit.]

  ANFISA: Where’s he gone? But I gave him tea ... What an odd man!

  MASHA [getting angry]: Go away! You pester us here, don’t give us any peace ... [Goes to the table with her cup.] I’m fed up with you, wretched old woman!

  ANFISA: What’s offended you? My darling!

  ANDREY’S VOICE: Anfisa!

  ANFISA [imitating him]: Anfisa! He sits in there ... [Exit.]

  MASHA [by the table in the reception hall, angrily]: Let me sit down! [Mixes up thecards on the table.] You’ve taken over the entire table with your cards. Drink your tea!

  IRINA: You are in a bad mood, Mashka.

  MASHA: Since I’m in a bad mood, don’t speak to me. Don’t touch me!