Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

SCENE III

THE SAME AND ELENA ANDREYEVNA

ELENA ANDREYEVNA (walks across the stage).

VOYNITSKY: Look at her: she walks and sways from sheer indolence! Fine! Very fine!

ELENA ANDREYEVNA: Stop it, George! It’s boring enough without your buzzing.

VOYNITSKY (barring her way): A talent, an artist! Well,

do yoa look like an artist? Apathetic, indolent, sluggish. . . .

So much virtue that, pardon me, it’s even unpleasant to look at. . . .

ELENA ANDREYEVNA: Don’t look then ... let me go. . . .

VOYNITSKY: Why are you pining away? (In a lively tone)

My dear, my lovely one, be a good girl! There’s mermaid’s blood flowing in your veins, why not be a mermaid?

ELENA ANDREYEVNA: Let me alone!

VOYNITSKY: Let yourself go, if only once in your life, fall in love quickly up to your very eyes with a merman . . .

FYODOR: And then flop headlong into the water with him and leave the Herr Professor and all of us waving our hands!

VOYNITSKY: Mermaid, eh? Love while you may!

ELENA ANDREYEVNA: And why do you go on teaching me?

As if I don’t know, without your telling me, how I should live if I had my will! Like a care-free bird I should fly away,

from all of you, from your sleepy faces, from your boring,

wearisome conversations. I should forget your very existence in the world, and no one would dare then teach me. But I haven’t my own will. I’m cowardly, shy, and it seems to me all along that, if I were to be unfaithful, all wives would follow my example and leave their husbands; that God would punish me, and my conscience torment me; otherwise I would show you what a free life is like! [Goes out.

ORLOVSKY: Dear soul, the beauty! . . .

VOYNITSKY: I believe I shall soon begin to despise this woman! She’s shy like a little girl, and philosophizes like an old deacon, adorned with virtues! Curdled milk!

ORLOVSKY: Stop, stop! . . . Where’s the professor now?

VOYNITSKY: In his study. Writing away.

ORLOVSKY: He called me here by letter on some business.

Do you happen to know what the business is?

VOYNITSKY: He can’t have any business. He writes rubbish,

grumbles and is jealous, that’s all.

ZHELTOUKHIN and JULIE enter by the door on the right.