OLGA [from behind the screen]: I still can’t hear you. Whatever silly things you may be saying, I still can’t hear.
MASHA: Oh, you are strange, Olya. If I love him — that’s my destiny. That is my fate ... And he loves me ... It’s all terrifying, isn’t it? And is it right? [Pulls Irina by the hand and draws her to her.] Oh my darling ... How are we going to live out our lives, what will become of us ... When you read some novel, you think it’s all old stuff and all so easy to understand, but when you yourself love someone, then you can see that no one knows anything and everybody has to decide for themselves ... My darlings, my sisters ... I have confessed to you, now I will be silent ... Now I will be like Gogol’s madman10 ... silence ... silence ...
[Enter ANDREY, followed by FERAPONT.]
=
ANDREY [crossly]: What do you want? I don’t understand ...
FERAPONT [at the door, impatiently]: Andrey Sergeich, I’ve already said it ten times.
ANDREY: First, to you I am not Andrey Sergeich but Your Honour!
FERAPONT: Your Honour, the firemen are asking, will you let them get down to the river through the garden? Otherwise they have to go all the way round - it’s a terrible nuisance.
ANDREY: Fine. Tell them it’s fine.
[Exit FERAPONT.]
I’m fed up with them. Where’s Olga?
[OLGA appears from behind her screen.]
I’ve come to see you, give me the key to the cupboard, I’ve lost mine. You’ve got that little key.
[OLGA gives him the key without saying anything. IRINA goes behind her screen; a pause.]
What an enormous fire! It’s now started to die down. What the devil, that Ferapont made me mad, I said something silly to him ... Your Honour ...
[A pause.]
Why aren’t you saying anything, Olya?
[A pause.]
It’s time now to stop being silly and sulking like this for no reason at all ... Masha, you’re here, Irina is here, that’s perfect - we’ll really have it out, once and for all. What have you got against me? What is it?
OLGA: Stop it, Andryusha. We’ll have it out tomorrow. [Becoming agitated.] What an agony this night has been!
ANDREY [very embarrassed]: Don’t get upset. I am asking you quite calmly - what have you got against me? Tell me straight.
[VERSHININ’s voice: ‘Tram-tam-tam!’]
MASHA [getting up, loudly]: Tra-ta-ta! [ToOlga] Good night, Olya, God bless. [Goes behind the screen and kisses Irina.] Sleep well ... Good night, Andrey. Go away, they’re exhausted ... you can explain tomorrow ... [Exit.]
OLGA: Really, Andryusha, let’s leave it till tomorrow ... [Goes behind her screen.] It’s time to sleep.
ANDREY: I’ll just say it and then go. Right ... First, you’ve got something against my wife Natasha, and I’ve noticed that ever since my wedding-day. If you want to know, Natasha is a fine, honest human being, noble and direct - that’s what I think. I love my wife and I respect her, you have to understand that, I respect her and I require others to respect her too. I repeat, she is an honest, noble human being, and all your dissatisfaction with her - I’m sorry - is just childish ...
[A pause.]
Secondly, you seem to be angry that I am not a professor and don’t do academic work. But I have a job in the District Council Office, I’m a member of the District Council and I consider that job of mine just as hallowed and elevated as an academic one. I’m a member of the District Council and I’m proud of it if you want to know ...
[A pause.]
Thirdly ... I have something else to say ... I have mortgaged the house without asking your permission ... In that I was wrong, I know, and I ask your forgiveness. Debts drove me to that ... thirty-five thousand ... I’ve stopped playing cards, I gave it up some while ago, but the chief thing I can say in my own defence is that you girls, you’ve been getting paid while I didn’t have ... any, as it were, earnings ...
[A pause.]
KULYGIN [at the door]: Isn’t Masha here? [Anxiously] Where is she? That’s strange ... [Exit.]
ANDREY: They’re not listening. Natasha is an exceptional, honest human being. [Walks about the stage in silence, then stops.] When I married, I thought we would be happy ... we would all be happy ... But my God ... [Weeps.] My darling sisters, dear sisters, don’t believe me, don’t believe me ... [Exit.]
KULYGIN [anxiously at the door]: Where’s Masha? Isn’t Masha here? That’s surprising. [Exit.]
[The alarm sounds. The stage is empty.]
IRINA [from behind the screen]: Olya! Who’s that knocking on the floor?
OLGA: It’s the Doctor, Ivan Romanych. He’s drunk.
IRINA: What a nightmarish night!
[A pause.]
Olya! [Looking out round the screen.] Have you heard? The Brigade is to be taken away from us and transferred somewhere far off.
OLGA: That’s just a rumour.
IRINA: Then we’ll be left on our own ... Olya!
OLGA: Yes?
IRINA: My darling love, I respect and I appreciate the Baron, he’s an excellent person, I will marry him, yes I will, only let us go to Moscow! I beg you, let us go! There’s nothing better than Moscow in the whole world! Let us go, Olya! Let us go!
[Curtain.]
Act Four
The old garden round the Prozorovs’ house.1 A long avenue of fir trees, at the end of which the river can be seen. On the far bank of the river is the forest. Right - the terrace of the house; here there are bottles and glasses on a table, the remains of champagne drinking. It is midday. From time to time passers-by go from the street to the river through the garden; five or six soldiers quickly walk down.
[CHEBUTYKIN, in a euphoric mood which stays with him for the whole act, is sitting in the garden in an armchair waiting to be called; he is wearing his army cap and has a stick. IRINA, KULYGIN, clean-shaven and with a decoration round his neck, and TUZENBAKH are standing on the terrace and saying goodbye to FEDOTIK and RODE going down the steps; both officers are in field dress.]
TUZENBAKH [kissing Fedotik]: You’re a good man, we’ve been such friends. [Kissing Rode.] Once more ... Goodbye, my dear fellow!
IRINA: Till we meet again!
FEDOTIK: No, no, it’s adieu - we won’t ever meet again!
KULYGIN: Who knows! [Wipes his eyes and smiles.] There, I started crying.
IRINA: We’ll meet some day.
FEDOTIK: In ten or fifteen years? But then we’ll hardly recognize one another, we’ll greet each other coldly ... [Takes a photograph.] Stand still ... Once more, for the last time.
RODE [embracing Tuzenbakh]: We won’t meet again ... [Kissing Irina’s hand.] Thank you for everything, everything!
FEDOTIK [crossly]: Can’t you stand still!
TUZENBAKH: We will see each other, God willing. Write to us. Make sure you write.
RODE [looking round the garden]: Goodbye, trees! [Shouting] Ho-ho!
[A pause.]
Goodbye, echo!
KULYGIN: For all I know you’ll get married over in Poland ... Your Polish wife will put her arms round you and say, ‘kochany, my darling.’2 [Laughs.]
FEDOTIK [looking at his watch]: We’ve got less than an hour left. In our battery only Solyony is taking the barge, we’re marching with the troops. Today three batteries of the division are leaving, in battalion order. Tomorrow another three - and then peace and quiet will descend on the town.
TUZENBAKH: And a terrible boredom.
RODE: And where is Mariya Sergeyevna?
KULYGIN: Masha’s in the garden.
FEDOTIK:I must say goodbye to her.
RODE: Goodbye, I must go or I’ll start crying ... [Quickly hugs Tuzenbakh and Kulygin, and kisses Irina’s hand.] We had wonderful times here ...
FEDOTIK [to Kulygin]: This is something for you to remember me by ... a notebook with a pencil ... We’ll go down here to the river ...
[They go off and both look back.]
RODE [shouting]: Ho-ho!
> KULYGIN [shouting]: Goodbye!
[At the back of the stage FEDOTIK and RODE meet MASHA and say goodbye to her; she goes out with them.]
IRINA: They’ve gone ... [Sits down on the bottom step of the terrace.]
CHEBUTYKIN: They forgot to say goodbye to me.
IRINA: What about you?
CHEBUTYKIN: And I kind of forgot. Besides, I’ll soon be seeing them, I’m leaving tomorrow. Yes ... I’ve got one little day left. In a year’s time I’ll be retired, I’ll come here again and I’ll live out my days near you. I’ve got just one short year till I get my pension ... [Puts a newspaper in his pocket and takes out another one.] I’ll come here and I’ll change my lifestyle completely ... I’ll be so quiet, so very good and well-behaved ...
IRINA: You need to change your lifestyle, my dear. You really must somehow.
CHEBUTYKIN: Yes. I see that. [Sings quietly] ‘Ta-ra-ra ... boom-de-ay ... ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay ...’3
KULYGIN: You’re incorrigible, Ivan Romanych! Incorrigible!
CHEBUTYKIN: I should become your pupil. Then I’d reform.
IRINA: Fyodor’s shaved his moustache off. I can’t bear to look!
KULYGIN: What’s the matter?
CHEBUTYKIN: I’d like to say what your face looks like now, but I just can’t.
KULYGIN: Why, it’s the done thing, the modus vivendi.4Our Principal is clean-shaven, and I am too. I shaved my moustache off when I became an inspector. No one likes it but I don’t care. I’m happy with it ... Whether I have a moustache or not, it’s all the same to me ... [Sits down.]
[At the back of the stage ANDREY wheels a sleeping baby in a pram.]
IRINA: Sweet Ivan Romanych, my dear friend, I’m terribly worried. You were on the boulevard yesterday, tell me what happened there.
CHEBUTYKIN: What happened? Nothing. A lot of nonsense! [Reads his paper.] What can it matter!
KULYGIN: They’re saying that Solyony and the Baron met yesterday on the boulevard by the theatre ...
TUZENBAKH: Stop it! Really ... [Makes a gesture with his hand and goes into the house.]
KULYGIN: By the theatre ... Solyony started to needle the Baron and he lost his temper and said something offensive ...
CHEBUTYKIN: I don’t know. All nonsense.
KULYGIN: A teacher in a seminary wrote ‘nonsense’ in Russian on an essay, and the pupil read it as Latin script - ‘renyxa’ - he thought it was written in Latin.5 [Laughs.] Terribly funny. They say Solyony’s in love with Irina and that he has developed a hatred for the Baron ... One can understand that. Irina is a very attractive girl. She’s even rather like Masha, she’s the thoughtful type. Only, Irina, you have got a gentler character. Although Masha by the way has a very nice character. I love her, Masha.
[In the depths of the garden, offstage: ‘Hallo-o! Ho-ho!’]
IRINA [shuddering] : Somehow everything scares me today.
[A pause.]
All my things are ready now, I’m sending them off after dinner. Tomorrow the Baron and I are getting married, and tomorrow too we’re going off to the brick factory, and the day after tomorrow I’ll be teaching, a new life is beginning. God will somehow help me! When I passed the teachers’ examination, I even cried for joy and well-being ...
[A pause.]
The cart will be coming now for my things.
KULYGIN: All very true of course, only somehow it’s not very serious. Just ideas and not much serious stuff. But I wish you the best with all my heart.
CHEBUTYKIN [overcome with emotion]: My wonderful, fine girl ... My golden girl ... You’ve gone far, I can’t catch up with you. I have remained behind like a migratory bird which has got old and can’t fly. Fly on, my dears, fly on with God’s blessing!
[A pause.]
Fyodor Ilyich, you made a mistake in shaving off your moustache.
KULYGIN: That’ll do! [Sighing.] Today the Army is leaving and everything will go back to what it was. Whatever they say there, Masha is a fine, honest woman, I love her very much, and I thank my destiny. People have different destinies. There’s a Kozyrev who works in the Excise Office here. He was at school with me, he was expelled from the fifth class of the Gymnasium for being quite unable to understand the consecutive ut.6Now he is terribly poor and ill, and whenever I meet him, I say to him, ‘Hallo there, Consecutive Ut.’ ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘Consecutive it is ...’ and he coughs. But I’ve had luck all my life, I’m happy, I’ve now even got a second-class Stanislav7 and I’m now myself teaching others that consecutive ut. Of course I am an intelligent man, more intelligent than very many, but happiness doesn’t lie in that ...
[In the house someone is playing ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’8on the piano.]
IRINA: And tomorrow I won’t have to hear that ‘Maiden’s Prayer’ any more and I won’t keep bumping into Protopopov ...
[A pause.]
But Protopopov is sitting there in the drawing-room; he’s come again today ...
KULYGIN: Hasn’t our headmistress come yet?
[MASHA quietly strolls across the back of the stage.]
IRINA: No. She’s been sent for. If only you knew how difficult it is for me to live here alone, without Olya ... She lives at the Gymnasium; she’s headmistress, she’s busy all day with work, and I’m alone, I’m bored, I haven’t got anything to do, and the room in which I live is hateful ... So I decided: if I am fated not to live in Moscow, that’s how it must be. It means it’s destiny. Nothing to be done ... Everything is by God’s will, true. Nikolay Lvovich proposed to me ... Well, I thought and made a decision. He’s a good man, it’s really astonishing how good he is ... And suddenly it was as if my spirit had grown wings, I cheered up, a weight was lifted from me and again I wanted to work, to work ... Only yesterday something happened, some mystery is hanging over me ...
CHEBUTYKIN: Renyxa. Nonsense.
NATASHA [through the window]: Our headmistress!
KULYGIN: The headmistress has arrived. Let’s go in.
[He and IRINA go into the house.]
CHEBUTYKIN [reads his paper and sings quietly]: Ta-ra-ra ... boom-de-ay ... ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay ...
[MASHA comes up; ANDREY wheels the pram across the back of the stage.]
MASHA: He’s sitting here nicely all by himself...
CHEBUTYKIN: Why not?
MASHA [sitting down]: No reason ...
[A pause.]
Did you love my mother?
CHEBUTYKIN: Very much.
MASHA: And did she love you?
CHEBUTYKIN [after a pause]: That I can’t remember.
MASHA: Is my fellow here? That’s what our cook Marfa used to call her policeman in the old days - my fellow. Is my fellow here?
CHEBUTYKIN: Not yet.
MASHA: When you get happiness in snatches, in small pieces, and then lose it, like me, then little by little you become coarse and ill-tempered. [Points to her breast.] I’m seething right here ... [Looking at her brother Andrey who is wheeling the pram.] There’s our dear brother Andrey ... All his hopes gone. Thousands of people raise a church bell, much labour and money have been spent, and suddenly it falls and smashes. Suddenly, just like that. That’s what happened to Andrey ...
ANDREY: And when will it be quiet at last in the house? There’s so much noise.
CHEBUTYKIN: Soon. [Looks at his watch, then winds it; the watch strikes.] I have an old-fashioned watch, a repeater ... The first, second and fifth batteries will leave at one precisely.
[A pause.]
And I’m leaving tomorrow.
ANDREY: For good?
CHEBUTYKIN: I don’t know. Maybe I’ll come back in a year. Although what the devil ... what can it matter ...
[A harp and violin are being played somewhere in the distance.]
ANDREY: The town will be emptied. Like someone snuffing out a candle.
[A pause.]
Something happened yesterday by the theatre; everyone is talking about it but I don’t know anything.
CHEBUTYKIN: It’s nothing
. All nonsense. Solyony started to needle the Baron and he lost his temper and insulted him, and the consequence was that Solyony was obliged to challenge him. [Looks at his watch.] I think it’s the time now ... At half past twelve in the public woods, the ones you can see from here on the other side of the river ... Bang-bang. [Laughs.] Solyony imagines he’s Lermontov and he even writes poetry. But joking apart, it’s already his third duel.
MASHA: Whose?
CHEBUTYKIN: Solyony’s.
MASHA: And the Baron’s?
CHEBUTYKIN : The Baron’s what?
[A pause.]
MASHA: Everything has become muddled in my head ... Anyway, I say they shouldn’t allow them. He could wound the Baron or even kill him.
The Plays of Anton Chekhov Page 29