The Collected Works of Anton Chekhov: Plays, Novellas, Short Stories, Diary & Letters. Anton Chekhov
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They’ll do as I want them. They are so kind…. [Going] I ordered sour milk for supper. The doctor says you must eat sour milk and nothing else, or you won’t get thin. [Stops] Bobby is so cold. I’m afraid his room is too cold for him. It would be nice to put him into another room till the warm weather comes. Irina’s room, for instance, is just right for a child: it’s dry and has the sun all day. I must tell her, she can share Olga’s room. It isn’t as if she was at home in the daytime, she only sleeps here…. [A pause] Andrey, darling, why are you so silent?
ANDREY. I was just thinking…. There is really nothing to say….
NATASHA. Yes… there was something I wanted to tell you…. Oh, yes. Ferapont has come from the Council offices, he wants to see you.
ANDREY. [Yawns] Call him here.
[NATASHA goes out; ANDREY reads his book, stooping over the candle she has left behind. FERAPONT enters; he wears a tattered old coat with the collar up. His ears are muffled.]
ANDREY. Good morning, grandfather. What have you to say?
FERAPONT. The Chairman sends a book and some documents or other. Here…. [Hands him a book and a packet.]
ANDREY. Thank you. It’s all right. Why couldn’t you come earlier? It’s past eight now.
FERAPONT. What?
ANDREY. [Louder]. I say you’ve come late, it’s past eight.
FERAPONT. Yes, yes. I came when it was still light, but they wouldn’t let me in. They said you were busy. Well, what was I to do. If you’re busy, you’re busy, and I’m in no hurry. [He thinks that ANDREY is asking him something] What?
ANDREY. Nothing. [Looks through the book] Tomorrow’s Friday. I’m not supposed to go to work, but I’ll come — all the same… and do some work. It’s dull at home. [Pause] Oh, my dear old man, how strangely life changes, and how it deceives! To-day, out of sheer boredom, I took up this book — old university lectures, and I couldn’t help laughing. My God, I’m secretary of the local district council, the council which has Protopopov for its chairman, yes, I’m the secretary, and the summit of my ambitions is — to become a member of the council! I to be a member of the local district council, I, who dream every night that I’m a professor of Moscow University, a famous scholar of whom all Russia is proud!
FERAPONT. I can’t tell… I’m hard of hearing….
ANDREY. If you weren’t, I don’t suppose I should talk to you. I’ve got to talk to somebody, and my wife doesn’t understand me, and I’m a bit afraid of my sisters — I don’t know why unless it is that they may make fun of me and make me feel ashamed… I don’t drink, I don’t like public-houses, but how I should like to be sitting just now in Tyestov’s place in Moscow, or at the Great Moscow, old fellow!
FERAPONT. Moscow? That’s where a contractor was once telling that some merchants or other were eating pancakes; one ate forty pancakes and he went and died, he was saying. Either forty or fifty, I forget which.
ANDREY. In Moscow you can sit in an enormous restaurant where you don’t know anybody and where nobody knows you, and you don’t feel all the same that you’re a stranger. And here you know everybody and everybody knows you, and you’re a stranger… and a lonely stranger.
FERAPONT. What? And the same contractor was telling — perhaps he was lying — that there was a cable stretching right across Moscow.
ANDREY. What for?
FERAPONT. I can’t tell. The contractor said so.
ANDREY. Rubbish. [He reads] Were you ever in Moscow?
FERAPONT. [After a pause] No. God did not lead me there. [Pause] Shall I go?
ANDREY. You may go. Goodbye. [FERAPONT goes] Goodbye. [Reads] You can come tomorrow and fetch these documents…. Go along…. [Pause] He’s gone. [A ring] Yes, yes…. [Stretches himself and slowly goes into his own room.]
[Behind the scene the nurse is singing a lullaby to the child. MASHA and VERSHININ come in. While they talk, a maidservant lights candles and a lamp.]
MASHA. I don’t know. [Pause] I don’t know. Of course, habit counts for a great deal. After father’s death, for instance, it took us a long time to get used to the absence of orderlies. But, apart from habit, it seems to me in all fairness that, however it may be in other towns, the best and most-educated people are army men.
VERSHININ. I’m thirsty. I should like some tea.
MASHA. [Glancing at her watch] They’ll bring some soon. I was given in marriage when I was eighteen, and I was afraid of my husband because he was a teacher and I’d only just left school. He then seemed to me frightfully wise and learned and important. And now, unfortunately, that has changed.
VERSHININ. Yes… yes.
MASHA. I don’t speak of my husband, I’ve grown used to him, but civilians in general are so often coarse, impolite, uneducated. Their rudeness offends me, it angers me. I suffer when I see that a man isn’t quite sufficiently refined, or delicate, or polite. I simply suffer agonies when I happen to be among schoolmasters, my husband’s colleagues.
VERSHININ. Yes…. It seems to me that civilians and army men are equally interesting, in this town, at any rate. It’s all the same! If you listen to a member of the local intelligentsia, whether to civilian or military, he will tell you that he’s sick of his wife, sick of his house, sick of his estate, sick of his horses…. We Russians are extremely gifted in the direction of thinking on an exalted plane, but, tell me, why do we aim so low in real life? Why?
MASHA. Why?
VERSHININ. Why is a Russian sick of his children, sick of his wife? And why are his wife and children sick of him?
MASHA. You’re a little downhearted to-day.
VERSHININ. Perhaps I am. I haven’t had any dinner, I’ve had nothing since the morning. My daughter is a little unwell, and when my girls are ill, I get very anxious and my conscience tortures me because they have such a mother. Oh, if you had seen her to-day! What a trivial personality! We began quarrelling at seven in the morning and at nine I slammed the door and went out. [Pause] I never speak of her, it’s strange that I bear my complaints to you alone. [Kisses her hand] Don’t be angry with me. I haven’t anybody but you, nobody at all…. [Pause.]
MASHA. What a noise in the oven. Just before father’s death there was a noise in the pipe, just like that.
VERSHININ. Are you superstitious?
MASHA. Yes.
VERSHININ. That’s strange. [Kisses her hand] You are a splendid, wonderful woman. Splendid, wonderful! It is dark here, but I see your sparkling eyes.
MASHA. [Sits on another chair] There is more light here.
VERSHININ. I love you, love you, love you… I love your eyes, your movements, I dream of them…. Splendid, wonderful woman!
MASHA. [Laughing] When you talk to me like that, I laugh; I don’t know why, for I’m afraid. Don’t repeat it, please…. [In an undertone] No, go on, it’s all the same to me…. [Covers her face with her hands] Somebody’s coming, let’s talk about something else.
[IRINA and TUZENBACH come in through the dining-room.]
TUZENBACH. My surname is really triple. I am called Baron Tuzenbach-Krone-Altschauer, but I am Russian and Orthodox, the same as you. There is very little German left in me, unless perhaps it is the patience and the obstinacy with which I bore you. I see you home every night.
IRINA. How tired I am!
TUZENBACH. And I’ll come to the telegraph office to see you home every day for ten or twenty years, until you drive me away. [He sees MASHA and VERSHININ; joyfully] Is that you? How do you do.
IRINA. Well, I am home at last. [To MASHA] A lady came to-day to telegraph to her brother in Saratov that her son died to-day, and she