Anton Chekhov: Plays, Short Stories, Diary & Letters (Collected Edition). Anton Chekhov
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purity can love those who are as pure and beautiful as themselves. His motherin-law, my mother, adores him to this day, and he still inspires a sort of worshipful awe in her. His second wife is, as you see, a brilliant beauty; she married him in his old age and has surrendered all the glory of her beauty and freedom to him. Why? What for?
ASTROFF. Is she faithful to him?
VOITSKI. Yes, unfortunately she is.
ASTROFF. Why unfortunately?
VOITSKI. Because such fidelity is false and unnatural, root and branch. It sounds well, but there is no logic in it. It is thought immoral for a woman to deceive an old husband whom she hates, but quite moral for her to strangle her poor youth in her breast and banish every vital desire from her heart.
TELEGIN. [In a tearful voice] Vanya, I don’t like to hear you talk so. Listen, Vanya; every one who betrays husband or wife is faithless, and could also betray his country.
VOITSKI. [Crossly] Turn off the tap, Waffles.
TELEGIN. No, allow me, Vanya. My wife ran away with a lover on the day after our wedding, because my exterior was unprepossessing. I have never failed in my duty since then. I love her and am true to her to this day. I help her all I can and have given my fortune to educate the daughter of herself and her lover. I have forfeited my happiness, but I have kept my pride. And she? Her youth has fled, her beauty has faded according to the laws of nature, and her lover is dead. What has she kept?
HELENA and SONIA come in; after them comes MME. VOITSKAYA carrying a book. She sits down and begins to read. Some one hands her a glass of tea which she drinks without looking up.
SONIA. [Hurriedly, to the nurse] There are some peasants waiting out there. Go and see what they want. I shall pour the tea. [Pours out some glasses of tea.]
MARINA goes out. HELENA takes a glass and sits drinking in the hammock.
ASTROFF. I have come to see your husband. You wrote me that he had rheumatism and I know not what else, and that he was very ill, but he appears to be as lively as a cricket.
HELENA. He had a fit of the blues yesterday evening and complained of pains in his legs, but he seems all right again to-day.
ASTROFF. And I galloped over here twenty miles at breakneck speed! No matter, though, it is not the first time. Once here, however, I am going to stay until tomorrow, and at any rate sleep quantum satis.
SONIA. Oh, splendid! You so seldom spend the night with us. Have you had dinner yet?
ASTROFF. No.
SONIA. Good. So you will have it with us. We dine at seven now. [Drinks her tea] This tea is cold!
TELEGIN. Yes, the samovar has grown cold.
HELENA. Don’t mind, Monsieur Ivan, we will drink cold tea, then.
TELEGIN. I beg your pardon, my name is not Ivan, but Ilia, ma’am — Ilia Telegin, or Waffles, as I am sometimes called on account of my pockmarked face. I am Sonia’s godfather, and his Excellency, your husband, knows me very well. I now live with you, ma’am, on this estate, and perhaps you will be so good as to notice that I dine with you every day.
SONIA. He is our great help, our right-hand man. [Tenderly] Dear godfather, let me pour you some tea.
MME. VOITSKAYA. Oh! Oh!
SONIA. What is it, grandmother?
MME. VOITSKAYA. I forgot to tell Alexander — I have lost my memory — I received a letter to-day from Paul Alexevitch in Kharkoff. He has sent me a new pamphlet.
ASTROFF. Is it interesting?
MME. VOITSKAYA. Yes, but strange. He refutes the very theories which he defended seven years ago. It is appalling!
VOITSKI. There is nothing appalling about it. Drink your tea, mamma.
MME. VOITSKAYA. It seems you never want to listen to what I have to say. Pardon me, Jean, but you have changed so in the last year that I hardly know you. You used to be a man of settled convictions and had an illuminating personality ——
VOITSKI. Oh, yes. I had an illuminating personality, which illuminated no one. [A pause] I had an illuminating personality! You couldn’t say anything more biting. I am forty-seven years old. Until last year I endeavoured, as you do now, to blind my eyes by your pedantry to the truths of life. But now — Oh, if you only knew! If you knew how I lie awake at night, heartsick and angry, to think how stupidly I have wasted my time when I might have been winning from life everything which my old age now forbids.
SONIA. Uncle Vanya, how dreary!
MME. VOITSKAYA. [To her son] You speak as if your former convictions were somehow to blame, but you yourself, not they, were at fault. You have forgotten that a conviction, in itself, is nothing but a dead letter. You should have done something.
VOITSKI. Done something! Not every man is capable of being a writer perpetuum mobile like your Herr Professor.
MME. VOITSKAYA. What do you mean by that?
SONIA. [Imploringly] Mother! Uncle Vanya! I entreat you!
VOITSKI. I am silent. I apologise and am silent. [A pause.]
HELENA. What a fine day! Not too hot. [A pause.]
VOITSKI. A fine day to hang oneself.
TELEGIN tunes the guitar. MARINA appears near the house, calling the chickens.
MARINA. Chick, chick, chick!
SONIA. What did the peasants want, nurse?
MARINA. The same old thing, the same old nonsense. Chick, chick, chick!
SONIA. Why are you calling the chickens?
MARINA. The speckled hen has disappeared with her chicks. I am afraid the crows have got her.
TELEGIN plays a polka. All listen in silence. Enter WORKMAN.
WORKMAN. Is the doctor here? [To ASTROFF] Excuse me, sir, but I have been sent to fetch you.
ASTROFF. Where are you from?
WORKMAN. The factory.
ASTROFF. [Annoyed] Thank you. There is nothing for it, then, but to go. [Looking around him for his cap] Damn it, this is annoying!
SONIA. Yes, it is too bad, really. You must come back to dinner from the factory.
ASTROFF. No, I won’t be able to do that. It will be too late. Now where, where — [To the WORKMAN] Look here, my man, get me a glass of vodka, will you? [The WORKMAN goes out] Where — where — [Finds his cap] One of the characters in Ostroff’s plays is a man with a long moustache and short wits, like me. However, let me bid you goodbye, ladies and gentlemen. [To HELENA] I should be really delighted if you would come to see me some day with Miss Sonia. My estate is small, but if you are interested in such things I should like to show you a nursery and seed-bed whose like you will not find within a thousand miles of here. My place is surrounded by government forests. The forester is old and always ailing, so I superintend almost all the work myself.
HELENA. I have always heard that you were very fond of the woods. Of course one can do a great deal of good by helping to preserve them, but does not that work interfere with your real calling?
ASTROFF. God alone knows what a man’s real calling is.
HELENA. And do you find it interesting?
ASTROFF. Yes, very.
VOITSKI. [Sarcastically] Oh, extremely!
HELENA. You are still young, not over thirty-six or seven, I should say, and I suspect that the woods do not interest you as much as you say they do. I should think you would find them monotonous.
SONIA. No, the work is thrilling. Dr. Astroff watches over the old woods and sets out new plantations every year, and he has already received a diploma and a bronze medal. If you will listen to what he can tell you, you will agree with him entirely. He says that forests are the