Anton Chekhov: Plays, Short Stories, Diary & Letters (Collected Edition). Anton Chekhov
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Understand! Once you do definitely make up your minds to the villas, then you’ll have as much money as you want and you’ll be saved.
LUBOV. Villas and villa residents — it’s so vulgar, excuse me.
GAEV. I entirely agree with you.
LOPAKHIN. I must cry or yell or faint. I can’t stand it! You’re too much for me! [To GAEV] You old woman!
GAEV. Really!
LOPAKHIN. Old woman! [Going out.]
LUBOV. [Frightened] No, don’t go away, do stop; be a dear. Please. Perhaps we’ll find some way out!
LOPAKHIN. What’s the good of trying to think!
LUBOV. Please don’t go away. It’s nicer when you’re here…. [Pause] I keep on waiting for something to happen, as if the house is going to collapse over our heads.
GAEV. [Thinking deeply] Double in the corner… across the middle….
LUBOV. We have been too sinful….
LOPAKHIN. What sins have you committed?
GAEV. [Puts candy into his mouth] They say that I’ve eaten all my substance in sugar-candies. [Laughs.]
LUBOV. Oh, my sins…. I’ve always scattered money about without holding myself in, like a madwoman, and I married a man who made nothing but debts. My husband died of champagne — he drank terribly — and to my misfortune, I fell in love with another man and went off with him, and just at that time — it was my first punishment, a blow that hit me right on the head — here, in the river… my boy was drowned, and I went away, quite away, never to return, never to see this river again…I shut my eyes and ran without thinking, but he ran after me… without pity, without respect. I bought a villa near Mentone because he fell ill there, and for three years I knew no rest either by day or night; the sick man wore me out, and my soul dried up. And last year, when they had sold the villa to pay my debts, I went away to Paris, and there he robbed me of all I had and threw me over and went off with another woman. I tried to poison myself…. It was so silly, so shameful…. And suddenly I longed to be back in Russia, my own land, with my little girl…. [Wipes her tears] Lord, Lord be merciful to me, forgive me my sins! Punish me no more! [Takes a telegram out of her pocket] I had this to-day from Paris…. He begs my forgiveness, he implores me to return…. [Tears it up] Don’t I hear music? [Listens.]
GAEV. That is our celebrated Jewish band. You remember — four violins, a flute, and a double-bass.
LUBOV So it still exists? It would be nice if they came along some evening.
LOPAKHIN. [Listens] I can’t hear…. [Sings quietly] “For money will the Germans make a Frenchman of a Russian.” [Laughs] I saw such an awfully funny thing at the theatre last night.
LUBOV. I’m quite sure there wasn’t anything at all funny. You oughtn’t to go and see plays, you ought to go and look at yourself. What a grey life you lead, what a lot you talk unnecessarily.
LOPAKHIN. It’s true. To speak the straight truth, we live a silly life. [Pause] My father was a peasant, an idiot, he understood nothing, he didn’t teach me, he was always drunk, and always used a stick on me. In point of fact, I’m a fool and an idiot too. I’ve never learned anything, my handwriting is bad, I write so that I’m quite ashamed before people, like a pig!
LUBOV. You ought to get married, my friend.
LOPAKHIN. Yes… that’s true.
LUBOV. Why not to our Varya? She’s a nice girl.
LOPAKHIN. Yes.
LUBOV. She’s quite homely in her ways, works all day, and, what matters most, she’s in love with you. And you’ve liked her for a long time.
LOPAKHIN. Well? I don’t mind… she’s a nice girl. [Pause.]
GAEV. I’m offered a place in a bank. Six thousand 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