The Collected Works of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov
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turn the tap off”!
DYADIN: I always bow down with reverence (bowing down to the ground) before the luminaries of science, who adorn our country’s horizon. Forgive me the audacity with which I crave to pay a visit to Your Excellency and to delight my soul in a conversation about the ultimate deductions of science.
SEREBRYAKOV: Pray, do come. I shall be pleased.
SONYA: Do tell us, godpa, where did you spend the winter? Where did you disappear to?
ORLOVSKY: I was in Gmunden, my sweet, I was also in Paris, in Nice; I was in London… .
SONYA: Splendid! What a happy man!
ORLOVSKY: Come with me in the autumn. Won’t you?
SONYA (singing): “Tempt me not without need “…
FYODOR: Don’t sing at lunch, or your husband’s wife will be a silly.
DYADIN: It would be interesting now just to have a glance at this table a vol d’oiseau. What a fascinating bouquet! A combination of grace, beauty, profound learning, popu
FYODOR: What fascinating language! Damn you! You speak as though someone were at work on your back with a plane… . (Laughter.)
ORLOVSKY (to SONYA): And you, my darling, you are not yet married… .
VOYNITSKY: Good heavens, whom could she marry? Humboldt is dead, Edison is in America, Schopenhauer is also dead… The other day I found her diary on her table: this size! I opened it and read: “No, I shall never fall in love… Love is the egotistical attraction of my ego to an object of the opposite sex.” … And I wonder what is not there? Transcendental, culminating point of the integrating principle … ugh! And where have you got to know all this?
SONYA: Whoever else may be ironical, you ought not to be, Uncle George.
VOYNITSKY: Why are you cross?
SONYA: If you say another word, one of us will have to go home. You or I… .
ORLOVSKY (laughing aloud): What a character!
VOYNITSKY: Yes, a character indeed, I must say. … (To SONYA) Give me your little paw! Please do! (Kissing her hand.) Peace and goodwill. … I won’t do it again.
SCENE VII
The same and KHROUSCHOV (the Wood Demon)
KHROUSCHOV (coming out of the house): Why am I not a painter? What a wonderful group!
ORLOVSKY (joyously): My dear godson!
KHROUSCHOV: My congratulations to the new-born. How do you do, Julie? How fine you look to-day, Godpa!
(Kissing ORLOVSKY.) Sophie Alexandrovna .’. .
(Greeting the rest of the company.)
ZHELTOUKHIN: How can you be so late! Where have you been?
KHROUSCHOV: At a patient’s.
JULIE: The pie has gone cold.
KHROUSCHOV: It doesn’t matter, Julie, I’ll eat it cold. Where shall I sit?
SONYA: Sit down here… .
(Pointing to a seat beside her.)
KHROUSCHOV: The weather is wonderful, and I have a ravenous appetite… Yes, I’ll have some vodka… .
(Drinking.) To the new-born! I’ll have this little pie… . Julie, give it a kiss, it’ll taste better… (She kisses it.) Merci! How are you, godpa? I haven’t seen you for a long time.
ORLOVSKY: Yes, it is a long time. I’ve been abroad.
KHROUSCHOV: I heard about it … and envied you. And how are you, Fyodor?
FYODOR: All right, your prayers support us, like pillars..
KHROUSCHOV: How are your affairs?
FYODOR,: I must not grumble. I am having a good time. Only, my dear fellow, there’s a lot of running to and fro. Sickening! From here to the Caucasus, from the Caucasus back here — continuously on the move, until I’m dazed. You know, I’ve got two estates there!
KHROUSCHOV: I know.
FYODOR: I am engaged in colonization and in catching tarantulas and scorpions. Business is going all right, but as regards “my surging passions, keep still! “ — all is as it used to be.
KHROUSCHOV: You’re in love, of course?
FYODOR: On which account, Wood Demon, we must have a drink. (Drinking.) … Gentlemen, never fall in love with married women! My word, it’s better to be wounded in the shoulder and shot through the leg, like you obedient servant, than to love a married woman… It’s such a misfortune! …
SONYA: Is it hopeless?
FYODOR: Hopeless indeed! Hopeless! … In this world there’s nothing hopeless. Hopeless, unhappy love, oh, ach! — all this is just nonsense! One has only to will. … If I will that my gun shall not miss fire, it won’t. If I will a woman to love me, she shall love me. Just so, Sonya, old chap! If I pick out a woman, I think it’s easier for her to jump to the moon than to get away from me.
SONYA: What a terrific fellow!
FYODOR: She won’t get away from me! I hardly have time to say three words to her before she’s already in my power… Yes. … I have only to say to her: “My lady, whenever you look at the window you must remember me. I will it.” And she remembers me a thousand times a day. Moreover, I bombard her every day with letters… .
ELENA ANDREYEVNA: Letters surely aren’t a safe method; she may receive them, but she may not read them.
FYODOR: You think so? H’m I … I have been living in this world for thirty-five years, and somehow I haven’t yet come across such phenomenal women as would have the courage not to open a letter.
ORLOVSKY (looking admiringly at hirn): See! My dear son, my beautiful son! I, too, was like that. Precisely, to a degree! Only that I was not in the war; but I drank and threw money about — terrible!
FYODOR: Misha, I do love her, seriously, hellishly… . Were she only to agree, I would just give her everything and all. … I would carry her to the Caucasus, to the mountains, we should live like singing birds. … I should guard her, Elena Andreyevna, like a faithful dog, and she would be to me as our marshal of nobility sings: “Thou wilt be the queen of the universe, thou my dearest.” Oh, she does not know how very happy she could be!
KHROUSCHOV: And who’s that lucky woman?
FYODOR: If you know too much, you’ll age quickly… . But enough about that. Now, let’s sing from a different opera. I remember, it’s about ten years ago — Lennie was still at school then — we were celebrating his birthday as we are now. I rode home — Sonya on my right arm, and Julie on my left, and both held on to my beard. Now, let’s drink the health of the friends of my youth, of Sonya and Julie!
DYADIN (laughing aloud): That is fascinating! That is fascinating!
FYODOR: Once, it was after the war, I was having drinks with a Turkish pasha in Trebizond. … All at once he asks me ——
DYADIN (interrupting): Let’s drink a toast to friendly relations. Vivat friendship! Here’s luck!
FYODOR: Stop, stop, stop! Sonya, I claim attention! I am having a bet, damn it! I am putting three hundred roubles on the table! Let’s go after lunch to play croquet, and I bet that in one round I shall get through all the hoops and back.
SONYA: I accept the bet; only I haven’t got three hundred roubles.
FYODOR: If