Part 12

VERSHININ. Yes. [Laughs] How strange everything really is! [Pause] When the fire broke out, I hurried off home; when I get there I see the house is whole, uninjured, and in no danger, but my two girls are standing by the door in just their underclothes, their mother isn’t there, the crowd is excited, horses and dogs are running about, and the girls’ faces are so agitated, terrified, beseeching, and I don’t know what else. My heart was pained when I saw those faces. My God, I thought, what these girls will have to put up with if they live long! I caught them up and ran, and still kept on thinking the one thing: what they will have to live through in this world! [Fire-alarm; a pause] I come here and find their mother shouting and angry. [MASHA enters with a pillow and sits on the sofa] And when my girls were standing by the door in just their underclothes, and the street was red from the fire, there was a dreadful noise, and I thought that something of the sort used to happen many years ago when an enemy made a sudden attack, and looted, and burned.... And at the same time what a difference there really is between the present and the past! And when a little more time has gone by, in two or three hundred years perhaps, people will look at our present life with just the same fear, and the same contempt, and the whole past will seem clumsy and dull, and very uncomfortable, and strange. Oh, indeed, what a life there will be, what a life! [Laughs] Forgive me, I’ve dropped into philosophy again. Please let me continue. I do awfully want to philosophize, it’s just how I feel at present. [Pause] As if they are all asleep. As I was saying: what a life there will be! Only just imagine.... There are only three persons like yourselves in the town just now, but in future generations there will be more and more, and still more, and the time will come when everything will change and become as you would have it, people will live as you do, and then you too will go out of date; people will be born who are better than you.... [Laughs] Yes, to-day I am quite exceptionally in the vein. I am devilishly keen on living.... [Sings.]

“The power of love all ages know, From its assaults great good does grow.” [Laughs.]

MASHA. Trum-tum-tum...

VERSHININ. Tum-tum...

MASHA. Tra-ra-ra?

VERSHININ. Tra-ta-ta. [Laughs.]

[Enter FEDOTIK.]

FEDOTIK. [Dancing] I’m burnt out, I’m burnt out! Down to the ground! [Laughter.]

IRINA. I don’t see anything funny about it. Is everything burnt?

FEDOTIK. [Laughs] Absolutely. Nothing left at all. The guitar’s burnt, and the photographs are burnt, and all my correspondence.... And I was going to make you a present of a note-book, and that’s burnt too.

[SOLENI comes in.]

IRINA. No, you can’t come here, Vassili Vassilevitch. Please go away.

SOLENI. Why can the Baron come here and I can’t?

VERSHININ. We really must go. How’s the fire?

SOLENI. They say it’s going down. No, I absolutely don’t see why the Baron can, and I can’t? [Scents his hands.]

VERSHININ. Trum-tum-tum.

MASHA. Trum-tum.

VERSHININ. [Laughs to SOLENI] Let’s go into the dining-room.

SOLENI. Very well, we’ll make a note of it. “If I should try to make this clear, the geese would be annoyed, I fear.” [Looks at TUZENBACH] There, there, there.... [Goes out with VERSHININ and FEDOTIK.]

IRINA. How Soleni smelt of tobacco.... [In surprise] The Baron’s asleep! Baron! Baron!

TUZENBACH. [Waking] I am tired, I must say.... The brickworks.... No, I’m not wandering, I mean it; I’m going to start work soon at the brickworks... I’ve already talked it over. [Tenderly, to IRINA] You’re so pale, and beautiful, and charming.... Your paleness seems to shine through the dark air as if it was a light.... You are sad, displeased with life.... Oh, come with me, let’s go and work together!

MASHA. Nicolai Lvovitch, go away from here.

TUZENBACH. [Laughs] Are you here? I didn’t see you. [Kisses IRINA’S hand] good-bye, I’ll go... I look at you now and I remember, as if it was long ago, your name-day, when you, cheerfully and merrily, were talking about the joys of labour.... And how happy life seemed to me, then! What has happened to it now? [Kisses her hand] There are tears in your eyes. Go to bed now; it is already day... the morning begins.... If only I was allowed to give my life for you!

MASHA. Nicolai Lvovitch, go away! What business...

TUZENBACH. I’m off. [Exit.]

MASHA. [Lies down] Are you asleep, Feodor?

KULIGIN. Eh?

MASHA. Shouldn’t you go home.

KULIGIN. My dear Masha, my darling Masha....

IRINA. She’s tired out. You might let her rest, Fedia.

KULIGIN. I’ll go at once. My wife’s a good, splendid... I love you, my only one....

MASHA. [Angrily] Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant.

KULIGIN. [Laughs] No, she really is wonderful. I’ve been your husband seven years, and it seems as if I was only married yesterday. On my word. No, you really are a wonderful woman. I’m satisfied, I’m satisfied, I’m satisfied!

MASHA. I’m bored, I’m bored, I’m bored.... [Sits up] But I can’t get it out of my head.... It’s simply disgraceful. It has been gnawing away at me... I can’t keep silent. I mean about Andrey.... He has mortgaged this house with the bank, and his wife has got all the money; but the house doesn’t belong to him alone, but to the four of us! He ought to know that, if he’s an honourable man.

KULIGIN. What’s the use, Masha? Andrey is in debt all round; well, let him do as he pleases.

MASHA. It’s disgraceful, anyway. [Lies down]

KULIGIN. You and I are not poor. I work, take my classes, give private lessons... I am a plain, honest man... _Omnia mea mecum porto_, as they say.

MASHA. I don’t want anything, but the unfairness of it disgusts me. [Pause] You go, Feodor.

KULIGIN. [Kisses her] You’re tired, just rest for half an hour, and I’ll sit and wait for you. Sleep.... [Going] I’m satisfied, I’m satisfied, I’m satisfied. [Exit.]

IRINA. Yes, really, our Andrey has grown smaller; how he’s snuffed out and aged with that woman! He used to want to be a professor, and yesterday he was boasting that at last he had been made a member of the district council. He is a member, and Protopopov is chairman.... The whole town talks and laughs about it, and he alone knows and sees nothing.... And now everybody’s gone to look at the fire, but he sits alone in his room and pays no attention, only just plays on his fiddle. [Nervily] Oh, it’s awful, awful, awful. [Weeps] I can’t, I can’t bear it any longer!... I can’t, I can’t!... [OLGA comes in and clears up at her little table. IRINA is sobbing loudly] Throw me out, throw me out, I can’t bear any more!

OLGA. [Alarmed] What is it, what is it? Dear!

IRINA. [Sobbing] Where? Where has everything gone? Where is it all? Oh my God, my God! I’ve forgotten everything, everything... I don’t remember what is the Italian for window or, well, for ceiling... I forget everything, every day I forget it, and life passes and will never return, and we’ll never go away to Moscow... I see that we’ll never go....

OLGA. Dear, dear....

IRINA. [Controlling herself] Oh, I am unhappy... I can’t work, I shan’t work. Enough, enough! I used to be a telegraphist, now I work at the town council offices, and I have nothing but hate and contempt for all they give me to do... I am already twenty-three, I have already been at work for a long while, and my brain has dried up, and I’ve grown thinner, plainer, older, and there is no relief of any sort, and time goes and it seems all the while as if I am going away from the real, the beautiful life, farther and farther away, down some precipice. I’m in despair and I can’t understand how it is that I am still alive, that I haven’t killed myself.

OLGA. Don’t cry, dear girl, don’t cry... I suffer, too.

IRINA. I’m not crying, not crying.... Enough.... Look, I’m not crying any more. Enough... enough!

OLGA. Dear, I tell you as a sister and a friend if you want my advice, marry the Baron. [IRINA cries softly] You respect him, you think highly of him.... It is true that he is not handsome, but he is so honourable and clean... people don’t marry from love, but in order to do one’s duty. I think so, at any rate, and I’d marry without being in love. Whoever he was, I should marry him, so long as he was a decent man. Even if he was old....

IRINA. I was always waiting until we should be settled in Moscow, there I should meet my true love; I used to think about him, and love him.... But it’s all turned out to be nonsense, all nonsense....

OLGA. [Embraces her sister] My dear, beautiful sister, I understand everything; when Baron Nicolai Lvovitch left the army and came to us in evening dress, [Note: I.e. in the correct dress for making a proposal of marriage.] he seemed so bad-looking to me that I even started crying.... He asked, “What are you crying for?” How could I tell him! But if God brought him to marry you, I should be happy. That would be different, quite different.

[NATASHA with a candle walks across the stage from right to left without saying anything.]

MASHA. [Sitting up] She walks as if she’s set something on fire.

OLGA. Masha, you’re silly, you’re the silliest of the family. Please forgive me for saying so. [Pause.]

MASHA. I want to make a confession, dear sisters. My soul is in pain. I will confess to you, and never again to anybody... I’ll tell you this minute. [Softly] It’s my secret but you must know everything... I can’t be silent.... [Pause] I love, I love... I love that man.... You saw him only just now.... Why don’t I say it... in one word. I love Vershinin.

OLGA. [Goes behind her screen] Stop that, I don’t hear you in any case.

MASHA. What am I to do? [Takes her head in her hands] First he seemed queer to me, then I was sorry for him... then I fell in love with him... fell in love with his voice, his words, his misfortunes, his two daughters.

OLGA. [Behind the screen] I’m not listening. You may talk any nonsense you like, it will be all the same, I shan’t hear.

MASHA. Oh, Olga, you are foolish. I am in love--that means that is to be my fate. It means that is to be my lot.... And he loves me.... It is all awful. Yes; it isn’t good, is it? [Takes IRINA’S hand and draws her to her] Oh, my dear.... How are we going to live through our lives, what is to become of us.... When you read a novel it all seems so old and easy, but when you fall in love yourself, then you learn that nobody knows anything, and each must decide for himself.... My dear ones, my sisters... I’ve confessed, now I shall keep silence.... Like the lunatics in Gogol’s story, I’m going to be silent... silent...

[ANDREY enters, followed by FERAPONT.]

ANDREY. [Angrily] What do you want? I don’t understand.

FERAPONT. [At the door, impatiently] I’ve already told you ten times, Andrey Sergeyevitch.

ANDREY. In the first place I’m not Andrey Sergeyevitch, but sir. [Note: Quite literally, “your high honour,” to correspond to Andrey’s rank as a civil servant.]

FERAPONT. The firemen, sir, ask if they can go across your garden to the river. Else they go right round, right round; it’s a nuisance.

ANDREY. All right. Tell them it’s all right. [Exit FERAPONT] I’m tired of them. Where is Olga? [OLGA comes out from behind the screen] I came to you for the key of the cupboard. I lost my own. You’ve got a little key. [OLGA gives him the key; IRINA goes behind her screen; pause] What a huge fire! It’s going down now. Hang it all, that Ferapont made me so angry that I talked nonsense to him.... Sir, indeed.... [A pause] Why are you so silent, Olga? [Pause] It’s time you stopped all that nonsense and behaved as if you were properly alive.... You are here, Masha. Irina is here, well, since we’re all here, let’s come to a complete understanding, once and for all. What have you against me? What is it?

OLGA. Please don’t, Audrey dear. We’ll talk to-morrow. [Excited] What an awful night!

ANDREY. [Much confused] Don’t excite yourself. I ask you in perfect calmness; what have you against me? Tell me straight.

VERSHININ’S VOICE. Trum-tum-tum!

MASHA. [Stands; loudly] Tra-ta-ta! [To OLGA] Goodbye, Olga, God bless you. [Goes behind screen and kisses IRINA] Sleep well.... Good-bye, Andrey. Go away now, they’re tired... you can explain to-morrow.... [Exit.]

ANDREY. I’ll only say this and go. Just now.... In the first place, you’ve got something against Natasha, my wife; I’ve noticed it since the very day of my marriage. Natasha is a beautiful and honest creature, straight and honourable--that’s my opinion. I love and respect my wife; understand it, I respect her, and I insist that others should respect her too. I repeat, she’s an honest and honourable person, and all your disapproval is simply silly... [Pause] In the second place, you seem to be annoyed because I am not a professor, and am not engaged in study. But I work for the zemstvo, I am a member of the district council, and I consider my service as worthy and as high as the service of science. I am a member of the district council, and I am proud of it, if you want to know. [Pause] In the third place, I have still this to say... that I have mortgaged the house without obtaining your permission.... For that I am to blame, and ask to be forgiven. My debts led me into doing it... thirty-five thousand... I do not play at cards any more, I stopped long ago, but the chief thing I have to say in my defence is that you girls receive a pension, and I don’t... my wages, so to speak.... [Pause.]

KULIGIN. [At the door] Is Masha there? [Excitedly] Where is she? It’s queer.... [Exit.]

ANDREY. They don’t hear. Natasha is a splendid, honest person. [Walks about in silence, then stops] When I married I thought we should be happy... all of us.... But, my God.... [Weeps] My dear, dear sisters, don’t believe me, don’t believe me.... [Exit.]

[Fire-alarm. The stage is clear.]

IRINA. [behind her screen] Olga, who’s knocking on the floor?

OLGA. It’s doctor Ivan Romanovitch. He’s drunk.

IRINA. What a restless night! [Pause] Olga! [Looks out] Did you hear? They are taking the brigade away from us; it’s going to be transferred to some place far away.

OLGA. It’s only a rumour.

IRINA. Then we shall be left alone.... Olga!

OLGA. Well?

IRINA. My dear, darling sister, I esteem, I highly value the Baron, he’s a splendid man; I’ll marry him, I’ll consent, only let’s go to Moscow! I implore you, let’s go! There’s nothing better than Moscow on earth! Let’s go, Olga, let’s go!

Curtain

## ACT IV

[The old garden at the house of the PROSOROVS. There is a long avenue of firs, at the end of which the river can be seen. There is a forest on the far side of the river. On the right is the terrace of the house: bottles and tumblers are on a table here; it is evident that champagne has just been drunk. It is midday. Every now and again passers-by walk across the garden, from the road to the river; five soldiers go past rapidly. CHEBUTIKIN, in a comfortable frame of mind which does not desert him throughout the act, sits in an armchair in the garden, waiting to be called. He wears a peaked cap and has a stick. IRINA, KULIGIN with a cross hanging from his neck and without his moustaches, and TUZENBACH are standing on the terrace seeing off FEDOTIK and RODE, who are coming down into the garden; both officers are in service uniform.]

TUZENBACH. [Exchanges kisses with FEDOTIK] You’re a good sort, we got on so well together. [Exchanges kisses with RODE] Once again.... Good-bye, old man!

IRINA. Au revoir!

FEDOTIK. It isn’t au revoir, it’s good-bye; we’ll never meet again!

KULIGIN. Who knows! [Wipes his eyes; smiles] Here I’ve started crying!

IRINA. We’ll meet again sometime.

FEDOTIK. After ten years--or fifteen? We’ll hardly know one another then; we’ll say, “How do you do?” coldly.... [Takes a snapshot] Keep still.... Once more, for the last time.

RODE. [Embracing TUZENBACH] We shan’t meet again.... [Kisses IRINA’S hand] Thank you for everything, for everything!

FEDOTIK. [Grieved] Don’t be in such a hurry!

TUZENBACH. We shall meet again, if God wills it. Write to us. Be sure to write.

RODE. [Looking round the garden] Good-bye, trees! [Shouts] Yo-ho! [Pause] Good-bye, echo!

KULIGIN. Best wishes. Go and get yourselves wives there in Poland.... Your Polish wife will clasp you and call you “kochanku!” [Note: Darling.] [Laughs.]

FEDOTIK. [Looking at the time] There’s less than an hour left. Soleni is the only one of our battery who is going on the barge; the rest of us are going with the main body. Three batteries are leaving to-day, another three to-morrow and then the town will be quiet and peaceful.

TUZENBACH. And terribly dull.

RODE. And where is Maria Sergeyevna?

KULIGIN. Masha is in the garden.

FEDOTIK. We’d like to say good-bye to her.

RODE. Good-bye, I must go, or else I’ll start weeping.... [Quickly embraces KULIGIN and TUZENBACH, and kisses IRINA’S hand] We’ve been so happy here....

FEDOTIK. [To KULIGIN] Here’s a keepsake for you... a note-book with a pencil.... We’ll go to the river from here.... [They go aside and both look round.]

RODE. [Shouts] Yo-ho!

KULIGIN. [Shouts] Good-bye!

[At the back of the stage FEDOTIK and RODE meet MASHA; they say good-bye and go out with her.]

IRINA. They’ve gone.... [Sits on the bottom step of the terrace.]

CHEBUTIKIN. And they forgot to say good-bye to me.

IRINA. But why is that?

CHEBUTIKIN. I just forgot, somehow. Though I’ll soon see them again, I’m going to-morrow. Yes... just one day left. I shall be retired in a year, then I’ll come here again, and finish my life near you. I’ve only one year before I get my pension.... [Puts one newspaper into his pocket and takes another out] I’ll come here to you and change my life radically... I’ll be so quiet... so agree... agreeable, respectable....

IRINA. Yes, you ought to change your life, dear man, somehow or other.

CHEBUTIKIN. Yes, I feel it. [Sings softly.] “Tarara-boom-deay....”

KULIGIN. We won’t reform Ivan Romanovitch! We won’t reform him!

CHEBUTIKIN. If only I was apprenticed to you! Then I’d reform.

IRINA. Feodor has shaved his moustache! I can’t bear to look at him.

KULIGIN. Well, what about it?

CHEBUTIKIN. I could tell you what your face looks like now, but it wouldn’t be polite.

KULIGIN. Well! It’s the custom, it’s modus vivendi. Our Director is clean-shaven, and so I too, when I received my inspectorship, had my moustaches removed. Nobody likes it, but it’s all one to me. I’m satisfied. Whether I’ve got moustaches or not, I’m satisfied.... [Sits.]

[At the back of the stage ANDREY is wheeling a perambulator containing a sleeping infant.]

IRINA. Ivan Romanovitch, be a darling. I’m awfully worried. You were out on the boulevard last night; tell me, what happened?

CHEBUTIKIN. What happened? Nothing. Quite a trifling matter. [Reads paper] Of no importance!

KULIGIN. They say that Soleni and the Baron met yesterday on the boulevard near the theatre....

TUZENBACH. Stop! What right... [Waves his hand and goes into the house.]

KULIGIN. Near the theatre... Soleni started behaving offensively to the Baron, who lost his temper and said something nasty....

CHEBUTIKIN. I don’t know. It’s all bunkum.

KULIGIN. At some seminary or other a master wrote “bunkum” on an essay, and the student couldn’t make the letters out--thought it was a Latin word “luckum.” [Laughs] Awfully funny, that. They say that Soleni is in love with Irina and hates the Baron.... That’s quite natural. Irina is a very nice girl. She’s even like Masha, she’s so thoughtful.... Only, Irina your character is gentler. Though Masha’s character, too, is a very good one. I’m very fond of Masha. [Shouts of “Yo-ho!” are heard behind the stage.]

IRINA. [Shudders] Everything seems to frighten me today. [Pause] I’ve got everything ready, and I send my things off after dinner. The Baron and I will be married to-morrow, and to-morrow we go away to the brickworks, and the next day I go to the school, and the new life begins. God will help me! When I took my examination for the teacher’s post, I actually wept for joy and gratitude.... [Pause] The cart will be here in a minute for my things....

KULIGIN. Somehow or other, all this doesn’t seem at all serious. As if it was all ideas, and nothing really serious. Still, with all my soul I wish you happiness.

CHEBUTIKIN. [With deep feeling] My splendid... my dear, precious girl.... You’ve gone on far ahead, I won’t catch up with you. I’m left behind like a migrant bird grown old, and unable to fly. Fly, my dear, fly, and God be with you! [Pause] It’s a pity you shaved your moustaches, Feodor Ilitch.

KULIGIN. Oh, drop it! [Sighs] To-day the soldiers will be gone, and everything will go on as in the old days. Say what you will, Masha is a good, honest woman. I love her very much, and thank my fate for her. People have such different fates. There’s a Kosirev who works in the excise department here. He was at school with me; he was expelled from the fifth class of the High School for being entirely unable to understand _ut consecutivum_. He’s awfully hard up now and in very poor health, and when I meet him I say to him, “How do you do, _ut consecutivum_.” “Yes,” he says, “precisely _consecutivum_...” and coughs. But I’ve been successful all my life, I’m happy, and I even have a Stanislaus Cross, of the second class, and now I myself teach others that _ut consecutivum_. Of course, I’m a clever man, much cleverer than many, but happiness doesn’t only lie in that....

[“The Maiden’s Prayer” is being played on the piano in the house.]

IRINA. To-morrow night I shan’t hear that “Maiden’s Prayer” any more, and I shan’t be meeting Protopopov.... [Pause] Protopopov is sitting there in the drawing-room; and he came to-day...

KULIGIN. Hasn’t the head-mistress come yet?

IRINA. No. She has been sent for. If you only knew how difficult it is for me to live alone, without Olga.... She lives at the High School; she, a head-mistress, busy all day with her affairs and I’m alone, bored, with nothing to do, and hate the room I live in.... I’ve made up my mind: if I can’t live in Moscow, then it must come to this. It’s fate. It can’t be helped. It’s all the will of God, that’s the truth. Nicolai Lvovitch made me a proposal.... Well? I thought it over and made up my mind. He’s a good man... it’s quite remarkable how good he is.... And suddenly my soul put out wings, I became happy, and light-hearted, and once again the desire for work, work, came over me.... Only something happened yesterday, some secret dread has been hanging over me....