The Collected Works of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov
Читать онлайн книгу.
got on so well together. [Exchanges kisses with RODE] Once again…. Goodbye, old man!
IRINA. Au revoir!
FEDOTIK. It isn’t au revoir, it’s goodbye; 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] Goodbye, trees! [Shouts] Yo-ho! [Pause] Goodbye, 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 tomorrow 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 goodbye to her.
RODE. Goodbye, 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 notebook with a pencil…. We’ll go to the river from here…. [They go aside and both look round.]
RODE. [Shouts] Yo-ho!
KULIGIN. [Shouts] Goodbye!
[At the back of the stage FEDOTIK and RODE meet MASHA; they say goodbye and go out with her.]
IRINA. They’ve gone…. [Sits on the bottom step of the terrace.]
CHEBUTIKIN. And they forgot to say goodbye to me.
IRINA. But why is that?
CHEBUTIKIN. I just forgot, somehow. Though I’ll soon see them again, I’m going tomorrow. 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.] “Tararaboom-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 tomorrow, and tomorrow 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. Tomorrow 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 lighthearted, and once again the desire for work, work, came over me…. Only something happened yesterday, some secret dread has been hanging over me….
CHEBUTIKIN. Luckum. Rubbish.
NATASHA. [At the window] The head-mistress.