The Plays of Anton Chekhov

by Anton Chekhov

PISHCHIK: It was a long journey.

  VARYA [to Lopakhin and Pishchik]: So, gentlemen. It’s after two, time to go.

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA [laughing]: You’re still just the same, Varya. [Pulls Varya to her and kisses her.] I’ll just have my coffee, then we’ll all go.

  [FIRS putsa cushion under her legs.]

  Thank you, dear Firs. I’ve got the habit of coffee. I drink it day and night. Thank you, old thing. [Kisses Firs.]

  VARYA: I’ll have a look to see if they’ve brought everything ... [Goes out.]

  LYUSOV ANDREYEVNA: Is it really me sitting here? [Laughs.] I want to jump and wave my arms about. [Covers her face with her hands.] Or am I dreaming! God is my witness, I love my country, I love it dearly, I couldn’t look out of the railway carriage, I was crying the whole time. [With tears in her eyes] But I must drink my coffee. Thank you, Firs, thank you, my dear old thing. I’m so glad you’re still alive.

  FIRS : The day before yesterday.

  GAYEV: He doesn’t hear well.

  LOPAKHIN: It’ll soon be five and I’ve got to leave right away for Kharkov. I’m really upset! I wanted to look at you and talk ... You’re still just as splendid.

  PISHCHIK [breathing heavily]: You look even lovelier ... That Paris frock ... I can’t control myself ...

  LOPAKHiN: Your brother, Leonid Andreich there, says I’m a lout, a kulak, but I really don’t care. Let him. I would only like you to trust me as you used to, I want your amazing, touching eyes to look on me as they used to. Merciful God! My father was a serf of your grandfather’s and your father’s, but you, yes you, once did so much for me that I’ve forgotten everything and love you like one of my own family ... more than one of my family.

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: I can’t sit, I’m incapable of it ... [Jumps up and walks about overcome with emotion.] I can’t get over this joy ... Laugh at me, I’m silly ... My dear little cupboard ... [Kisses the cupboard.] My little table.

  GAYEV: Nyanya died while you were away.

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA [sitting down and drinking her coffee]: Yes, God rest her soul. They wrote to me.

  GAYEV: And Anastasy is dead. Petrushka Kosoy has left me and is now working in town for the police chief. [Takes a box of sweets out of his pocket and puts one in his mouth.]

  PISHCHIK: My daughter Dashenka ... sends you her regards ...

  LOPAKHIN: I want to say something very nice and cheerful to you. [Looking at his watch.] I’ll go now, there’s no time to talk ... well, I’ll do it in two or three words. You already know that your cherry orchard is being sold to pay the debts, the sale is fixed for the twenty-second of August, but don’t worry, my dear lady, there’s a way out ... Here is my plan. Listen! Your property is only twenty versts from the town, the railway has come near, and if you break up the cherry orchard and the land along the river into building plots and then lease them out for dachas, you’ll have at least twenty-five thousand a year income.3

  GAYEV: Excuse me, what rubbish!

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: I don’t quite understand you, Yermolay Alekseich.

  LOPAKHIN: You’ll get at least twenty-five roubles a year from holiday visitors for a desyatinaof land, and if you advertise now, I’ll bet you anything, by autumn you won’t have a scrap left over, they’ll take it all up. In a word, congratulations, you are rescued. The situation is wonderful here, the river’s deep. Only of course it needs tidying and cleaning up ... say, for example, pull down all the old buildings like this house, which isn’t good for anything now, cut down the old cherry orchard ...

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: Cut it down? My dear man, forgive me, you don’t understand anything. If there is anything interesting, even remarkable, in the whole of this province, it’s our cherry orchard.

  LOPAKHIN: The only thing remarkable about the orchard is that it’s very big. The trees bear fruit every other year, and you can’t do anything with the fruit, no one buys it.

  GAYEV: And the orchard is mentioned in the Encyclopaedia.

  LOPAKHIN [looking at his watch] : If we don’t come up with anything and actually do something, on the twenty-second of August both the cherry orchard and the whole estate will be sold at auction. Make your decision! There’s no other solution, I swear to you. Absolutely none.

  FIRS: In the old days, forty or fifty years ago, they dried the cherries, soaked them, marinaded them, made jam, and they used to ...

  GAYEV: Be quiet, Firs.

  FIRS: And they used to send the dried cherries, whole wagonloads of them, to Moscow and Kharkov. That brought in money! And the dried cherries then were soft, juicy, sweet, perfumed ... They knew a recipe then ...

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: And where’s that recipe now?

  FIRS: They forgot it. No one can remember it.

  PISHCHIK [to Lyubov Andreyevna]: What did you do in Paris? How was it? Did you eat frogs?

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: I ate crocodile.

  PISHCHIK: Imagine that ...

  LOPAKHIN: Till now there were just masters and muzhiks in the country, but now summer visitors have appeared as well. Every town, even the very smallest, is now surrounded by dachas. And one can say that in twenty years’ time there’ll be an extraordinary increase of summer visitors. Now they just drink tea on the veranda but it may well be that they’ll work their single desyatina of land, and then your cherry orchard will become happy, wealthy, splendid ...

  GAYEV [becoming indignant]: What nonsense!

  [Enter VARYA and YASHA.]

  VARYA: Mama, there are two telegrams for you. [Takes out a key and noisily unlocks the old cupboard.] Here they are.

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: They’re from Paris. [Tears up the telegrams without having read them.] I’ve finished with Paris ...

  GAYEV: Do you know, Lyuba, how old that cupboard is? A week ago I opened the bottom drawer and looked in, and there are numbers burnt into the wood there. The cupboard was made exactly one hundred years ago. Can you imagine? Eh? We could celebrate its jubilee. An inanimate object, but still, for all that, a book cupboard.

  PISHCHIK [in astonishment]: A hundred years ... Imagine that! ...

  GAYEV: Yes ... It is something ... [Feeling the cupboard.] Dear, revered cupboard! I salute your existence which for more than a hundred years now has been directed towards the shining ideals of good and justice; your silent call to fruitful labour has not faltered in the course of a hundred years, preserving [with tears in his eyes] in generations of our family a good spirit, faith in a better future and fostering in us ideals of the good and of social consciousness.

  [A pause.]

  LOPAKHIN: Yes...

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: You’re still just the same, Lyonya.

  GAYEV [a little embarrassed]: Off the ball, right, into the corner! I’m aiming for the middle pocket!

  LOPAKHIN [looking at his watch]: Well, I must be going.

  YASHA [giving medicines to Lyubov Andreyevna]: Perhaps you should take your pills now ...

  PISHCHIK: You mustn’t take medicines, dear lady ... they do no harm or good ... Give them here ... Madame. [Takes the pills, pours them out onto the palm of his hand, blows on them, puts them in his mouth and washes them down with some kvass.] Like that!

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA [alarmedly]: You’ve gone mad!

  PISHCHIK: I took all the pills.

  LOPAKHIN: Greedy.

  [Everyone laughs.]

  FIRS: When the gentleman was here in Holy Week, he ate half a bucket of gherkins ... [Mumbles his words.]

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: What’s he saying?

  VARYA: He’s been mumbling like that for the last three years. We’ve got used to it.

  YASHA: He’s getting senile.

  [CHARLOTTA IVANOVNA crosses the stage; wearing a white dress, very thin and tightly corseted, with a lorgnette at her waist.]

  LOPAKHIN: I’m sorry, Charlotta Ivanovna, I haven’t yet managed to greet you. [Tries to kiss her hand.]

  CHARL0TTA [taking away her hand]: If I let you kiss my hand, you’ll want the elbow next, then the shoulder ...


  LOPAKHiN: It’s not my lucky day.

  [Everyone laughs.]

  Charlotta Ivanovna, do a trick!

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: Charlotta, do a trick!

  CHARLOTTA: Not now. I want to go to sleep. [Exit.]

  LOPAKHIN: We’ll see each other in three weeks. [Kisses Lyubov Andreyevna’s hand.] Goodbye for now. I must go. [To Gayev] Goodbye. [Kisses Pishchik.] Goodbye. [Shakes hands with Varya, then with Firs and Yasha.] I don’t want to go. [To Lyubov Andreyevna] If you make up your mind about the dachas and decide, let me know, I’ll borrow fifty thousand. Think about it seriously.

  VARYA [angrily]: Go off now!

  LOPAKHIN: I’m going, I’m going ... [Leaves.]

  GAYEV: What a lout. Oh, pardon... Varya’s going to marry him, he’s Varya’s intended.

  VARYA: You’re saying more than you should, Uncle.

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: Well, Varya, I’ll be very pleased. He’s a good man.

  PISHCHIK: A man, if truth be told ... a very worthy man ... And my Dashenka ... also says that ... she says all kinds of things. [Emits a snore but wakes up immediately.] Anyway, dear lady, can you lend me ... two hundred and forty roubles ... tomorrow I have to pay my mortgage interest ...

  VARYA [alarmed]: We just haven’t got it!

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: I really haven’t got anything.

  PISHCHIK: I’ll find something. [Laughs.] I never lose hope. I thought everything was lost, I was ruined, and — there, the railway crossed my land and ... they paid me. And here, see, something else will happen, if not today then tomorrow ... Dashenka will win two hundred thousand ... She has a lottery ticket.

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: We’ve had our coffee, we can go to bed.

  FIRS [brushing Gayev down, reprovinglyJ: You’ve again put on the wrong trousers. What am I to do with you!

  VARYA [quietly]: Anya is asleep. [Quietly opens the window.] The sun’s already risen, it isn’t cold. Look, Mama: what beautiful trees! My God, the air! The starlings are singing!

  GAYEV [opening another window]: The orchard is all white. You haven’t forgotten, Lyuba? That avenue goes straight, straight as a ribbon, it’s all shining on moonlit nights. Do you remember? You haven’t forgotten?

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA [looking at the orchard through the window]: Oh my childhood, my innocence! I used to sleep in this nursery, I used to look at the orchard from here, happiness woke up with me every morning, and the orchard was just like this, nothing has changed. [Laughs with joy.] All white, all white! Oh my orchard! After the dark and overcast autumn and the cold winter you’re young again, full of happiness, the angels in heaven have not forsaken you ... If only I could take this heavy stone from my breast and shoulders, if I could forget my past!

  GAYEV : Yes, and the orchard will be sold to pay off debts, strange though it is.

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: Look, our dead mother is walking in the orchard ... in a white dress! [Laughs with joy.] It’s her.

  GAYEV : Where?

  VARYA : Bless you, Mama.

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: There’s no one, I was seeing things. On the right there, at the turning to the summer-house, a white tree was bending, like a woman ...

  [Enter TROFIMOV in an old student uniform, wearing glasses.]

  What a wonderful orchard! The white masses of flowers, the blue sky...

  TROFIMOV: Lyubov Andreyevna!

  [She looks round at him.]

  I’ll just greet you and go off right away. [Kisses her hand warmly.] I was told to wait till morning but I didn’t have the patience ...

  [LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA looks at him with bewilderment.]

  VARYA [with tears in her eyes] : It’s Petya Trofimov ...

  TROFIMOV : Petya Trofimov, your Grisha’s old tutor ... Have I changed so much?

  [LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA embraces him and quietly weeps.]

  GAYEV [embarrassedly] : That’ll do, Lyuba.

  VARYA [crying] : I told you, Petya, to wait till tomorrow.

  LYUSOV ANDREYEVNA: My Grisha ... my boy ... Grisha ... my son...

  VARYA : What can we do, Mama? It was God’s will.

  TROFIMOV [gently, with tears in his eyes] : There, there ...

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA [crying softly]: My little boy died, he drowned ... Why? Why, my friend? [More quietly] Anya is sleeping there, and I’m talking loudly ... I’m making a noise ... So, Petya? Why’ve you lost your looks? Become so old?

  TROFIMOV:A woman on the train called me a moth-eaten gentleman.

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: You were just a boy then, a dear little student, and now your hair is thin and you’re wearing glasses. Are you really still a student? [Goes to the door.]

  TROFIMOV : I suppose I’m going to be a perpetual student.

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA [kissing her brother, then Varya] : Well, go to bed ... You’ve aged too, Leonid.

  PISHCHIK [following her]: So, now to bed ... Oh, this gout of mine. I’ll stay here with you ... Lyubov Andreyevna, my dear, if I could have, tomorrow morning ... two hundred and forty roubles ...

  GAYEV: He only thinks of himself.

  PISHCHIK : Two hundred and forty roubles ... to pay my mortgage interest.

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: I have no money, my love.

  PISHCHIK : I’ll pay it back, dear ... It’s a tiny amount ...

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: Very well, Leonid will give it to you ... Give it to him, Leonid.

  GAYEV: Me give anything? No hope.

  LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: Don’t worry, give it to him ... He needs it ... He’ll pay it back.

  [Exeunt LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA, TROFIMOV, PISHCHIK and FIRS. GAYEV, VARYA and YASHA remain.]

  GAYEV : My sister still hasn’t lost the habit of being extravagant. [To Yasha] Be a good chap and move away a little, you smell of chicken.

  YASHA [grinning] : You haven’t changed, Leonid Andreich.

  GAYEV : What? [To Varya] What did he say?

  VARYA [to Yasha]: Your mother has come from the village, she’s been sitting since yesterday in the servants’ hall, she wants to see you...

  YASHA: Good luck to her!

  VARYA: Oh, aren’t you ashamed of yourself!

  YASHA : That’s just what I need. She could come tomorrow. [Goes out.]

  VARYA: Mamochka is just the same, she hasn’t changed at all. If it was up to her she would give it all away.

  GAYEV: Yes ...

  [A pause.]

  If a great many remedies are prescribed for some disease, that means the disease is incurable. I think, I rack my brain, I have many remedies, a very great many, and that means, in actual fact, not a single one. It would be good to inherit from somebody, it would be good to marry our Anya to a very rich man, it would be good to go to Yaroslavl and try our luck with our aunt, the Countess. Our aunt is a very, very rich woman.

  VARYA [weeping] : If God would come to our help!

  GAYEV: Stop crying. Our aunt is very rich but she doesn’t like us. In the first place, my sister married a lawyer, not a nobleman...

  [ANYA appears in the doorway.]

  She married a commoner and it can’t be said her behaviour has been very virtuous. She is good, kind, a fine person, I love her very much, but however much you make allowances for mitigating circumstances, you have to admit she’s still an immoral woman. You can feel it in her slightest movement.

  VARYA [in a whisper]: Anya is standing at the door.

  GAYEV: What?

  [A pause.]

  Funny, I’ve got something in my right eye ... I can’t see very well. And on Thursday, when I was at the district court ...

  [Enter ANYA.]

  VARYA : Why aren’t you asleep, Anya?

  ANYA : I can’t sleep. I’m not sleepy.

  GAYEV: My darling. [Kisses Anya’s face and hands.] My child ... [With tears in his eyes] You aren’t my niece, you’re my angel, you’re everything to me. Believe me, believe ...

  ANYA : I believe you, Uncle. Everyone loves you, respects you ... but dear Uncle, you mustn’t say things, just keep your mouth shut. What did you say just now
about my Mama, about your sister? Why did you say that?

  GAYEV: Yes, yes ... [Hides his face with her hand.] Really, it’s terrible! My God! God have mercy on me! And I made that speech today in front of the cupboard ... so stupid! And it was only when I’d finished that I understood it was stupid.

  VARYA: It’s true, dear Uncle, you should keep your mouth shut. Just be quiet, that’s all.

  ANYA: If you keep your mouth shut, you’ll feel calmer.

  GAYEV : I won’t speak. [Kisses Anya’s and Varya’s hands.] I won’t speak. Only about business. On Thursday I was at the district court, well, people came, we began to talk of this and that, a whole load of things, and it seems it might be possible to arrange a loan against promissory notes so that the bank can be paid the interest.

  VARYA: If only God could come to our help!

  GAYEV : I’ll go on Tuesday, I’ll talk to them again. [To Varya] Stop crying. [To Anya] Your Mama will talk to Lopakhin; he of course won’t refuse her ... And when you’ve had a rest, you can go to Yaroslavl to the Countess, your great-aunt. In that way we’ll act on three fronts — and our business will be settled. We’ll pay off the interest, I’m sure of that ... [Puts a sweet into his mouth.] I swear on my honour, on whatever you like, the estate won’t be sold! [Excitedly] I swear by my happiness! Here’s my hand, you can call me a piece of trash, a man without honour, if I let things go to auction! I swear by my whole being!

  ANYA [her peace of mind has come back, she is happy]: How good are you, Uncle, how clever! [Embraces her uncle.] I won’t worry now! I won’t worry! I’m happy!

  [Enter FIRS.]