Plays by Anton Chekhov, Second Series

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.