The Collected Works of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov
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roubles a year…. Did you hear?
LUBOV. What’s the matter with you! Stay where you are….
[Enter FIERS with an overcoat.]
FIERS. [To GAEV] Please, sir, put this on, it’s damp.
GAEV. [Putting it on] You’re a nuisance, old man.
FIERS It’s all very well…. You went away this morning without telling me. [Examining GAEV.]
LUBOV. How old you’ve grown, Fiers!
FIERS. I beg your pardon?
LOPAKHIN. She says you’ve grown very old!
FIERS. I’ve been alive a long time. They were already getting ready to marry me before your father was born…. [Laughs] And when the Emancipation came I was already first valet. Only I didn’t agree with the Emancipation and remained with my people…. [Pause] I remember everybody was happy, but they didn’t know why.
LOPAKHIN. It was very good for them in the old days. At any rate, they used to beat them.
FIERS. [Not hearing] Rather. The peasants kept their distance from the masters and the masters kept their distance from the peasants, but now everything’s all anyhow and you can’t understand anything.
GAEV. Be quiet, Fiers. I’ve got to go to town tomorrow. I’ve been promised an introduction to a General who may lend me money on a bill.
LOPAKHIN. Nothing will come of it. And you won’t pay your interest, don’t you worry.
LUBOV. He’s talking rubbish. There’s no General at all.
[Enter TROFIMOV, ANYA, and VARYA.]
GAEV. Here they are.
ANYA. Mother’s sitting down here.
LUBOV. [Tenderly] Come, come, my dears…. [Embracing ANYA and VARYA] If you two only knew how much I love you. Sit down next to me, like that. [All sit down.]
LOPAKHIN. Our eternal student is always with the ladies.
TROFIMOV. That’s not your business.
LOPAKHIN. He’ll soon be fifty, and he’s still a student.
TROFIMOV. Leave off your silly jokes!
LOPAKHIN. Getting angry, eh, silly?
TROFIMOV. Shut up, can’t you.
LOPAKHIN. [Laughs] I wonder what you think of me?
TROFIMOV. I think, Ermolai Alexeyevitch, that you’re a rich man, and you’ll soon be a millionaire. Just as the wild beast which eats everything it finds is needed for changes to take place in matter, so you are needed too.
[All laugh.]
VARYA. Better tell us something about the planets, Peter.
LUBOV ANDREYEVNA. No, let’s go on with yesterday’s talk!
TROFIMOV. About what?
GAEV. About the proud man.
TROFIMOV. Yesterday we talked for a long time but we didn’t come to anything in the end. There’s something mystical about the proud man, in your sense. Perhaps you are right from your point of view, but if you take the matter simply, without complicating it, then what pride can there be, what sense can there be in it, if a man is imperfectly made, physiologically speaking, if in the vast majority of cases he is coarse and stupid and deeply unhappy? We must stop admiring one another. We must work, nothing more.
GAEV. You’ll die, all the same.
TROFIMOV. Who knows? And what does it mean — you’ll die? Perhaps a man has a hundred senses, and when he dies only the five known to us are destroyed and the remaining ninety-five are left alive.
LUBOV. How clever of you, Peter!
LOPAKHIN. [Ironically] Oh, awfully!
TROFIMOV. The human race progresses, perfecting its powers. Everything that is unattainable now will some day be near at hand and comprehensible, but we must work, we must help with all our strength those who seek to know what fate will bring. Meanwhile in Russia only a very few of us work. The vast majority of those intellectuals whom I know seek for nothing, do nothing, and are at present incapable of hard work. They call themselves intellectuals, but they use “thou” and “thee” to their servants, they treat the peasants like animals, they learn badly, they read nothing seriously, they do absolutely nothing, about science they only talk, about art they understand little. They are all serious, they all have severe faces, they all talk about important things. They philosophize, and at the same time, the vast majority of us, ninety-nine out of a hundred, live like savages, fighting and cursing at the slightest opportunity, eating filthily, sleeping in the dirt, in stuffiness, with fleas, stinks, smells, moral filth, and so on… And it’s obvious that all our nice talk is only carried on to distract ourselves and others. Tell me, where are those créches we hear so much of? and where are those reading-rooms? People only write novels about them; they don’t really exist. Only dirt, vulgarity, and Asiatic plagues really exist…. I’m afraid, and I don’t at all like serious faces; I don’t like serious conversations. Let’s be quiet sooner.
LOPAKHIN. You know, I get up at five every morning, I work from morning till evening, I am always dealing with money — my own and other people’s — and I see what people are like. You’ve only got to begin to do anything to find out how few honest, honourable people there are. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I think: “Oh Lord, you’ve given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants.”
LUBOV. You want giants, do you?… They’re only good in stories, and even there they frighten one. [EPIKHODOV enters at the back of the stage playing his guitar. Thoughtfully:] Epikhodov’s there.
ANYA. [Thoughtfully] Epikhodov’s there.
GAEV. The sun’s set, ladies and gentlemen.
TROFIMOV. Yes.
GAEV [Not loudly, as if declaiming] O Nature, thou art wonderful, thou shinest with eternal radiance! Oh, beautiful and indifferent one, thou whom we call mother, thou containest in thyself existence and death, thou livest and destroyest….
VARYA. [Entreatingly] Uncle, dear!
ANYA. Uncle, you’re doing it again!
TROFIMOV. You’d better double the red into the middle.
GAEV. I’ll be quiet, I’ll be quiet.
[They all sit thoughtfully. It is quiet. Only the mumbling of FIERS is heard. Suddenly a distant sound is heard as if from the sky, the sound of a breaking string, which dies away sadly.]
LUBOV. What’s that?
LOPAKHIN. I don’t know. It may be a bucket fallen down a well somewhere. But it’s some way off.
GAEV. Or perhaps it’s some bird… like a heron.
TROFIMOV. Or an owl.
LUBOV. [Shudders] It’s unpleasant, somehow. [A pause.]
FIERS. Before the misfortune the same thing happened. An owl screamed and the samovar hummed without stopping.
GAEV. Before what misfortune?
FIERS. Before the Emancipation. [A pause.]
LUBOV. You know, my friends, let’s go in; it’s evening now. [To ANYA] You’ve tears in your eyes…. What is it, little girl? [Embraces her.]
ANYA. It’s nothing, mother.
TROFIMOV. Some one’s coming.
[Enter a TRAMP in an old white peaked cap and overcoat. He is a little drunk.]
TRAMP. Excuse me, may I go this way straight through to the station?
GAEV. You may. Go along this path.
TRAMP. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. [Hiccups] Lovely