The Complete Plays

THE FOOL, OR THE RETIRED CAPTAIN¹

Дypa, или Kaпитaн ‚ oтcтa‚ke

(A Scenelet from an Unproduced Vaudeville)

The marrying season. RETIRED CAPTAIN SOUSOV² (sits on an oilcloth-covered divan, both hands clasped, pressing one leg against his body. He rocks back and forth while he talks.) THE MATCHMAKER LUKINISHNA³ (an obese old woman with a stupid but kindly face) is placed to one side on a stool. Her face bears an expression of aversion, mingled with wonder. In profile she looks like a snail, full face like a black spider. She speaks obsequiously and hiccups after every word.

CAPTAIN. Still, if you look at this from a point of view, then Ivan Nikolaevich acted very practically. He did the right thing in getting married. You may be a professor or a genius, but if you’re not married, you aren’t worth a red cent. You’ve got no civil rights or social standing . . . Anyone who isn’t married can have no real weight in society . . . Just take me for example . . . I’m a man of the educated classes, a home-owner, with money . . . There’s my rank as well . . . and a medal, but what good am I? Who am I, if you look at me from a point of view? A loner . . . A kind of synonym and nothing more (thinks about it). Everyone’s married, everyone’s got kids, only I . . . like in that ballad . . . (sings a sorrowful ballad in a tenor voice). That’s what my life is like . . . If only I had even some shop-soiled bride!

LUKINISHNA. Why shop-soiled? For you, dearie, a shop-soiled one won’t do. With your nobleness and all your, pardon the expression, virtues you could marry anybody, and with money . . .

CAPTAIN. I don’t need money. I won’t stoop to do such a dirty deed as marry for money. I have my own money and I don’t want to eat my wife’s bread, she should eat mine. If you pick a poor girl, she will have feelings, be understanding . . . I’m not so selfish that for self-interest I’d . . .

LUKINISHNA. That’s the truth, dearie . . . A poor creature will be more beautiful than a rich girl . . .

CAPTAIN. And I don’t need beauty, either. What good is it? You don’t drink water from a face. Beauty should be not in one’s person, but in one’s soul . . . What I want is goodness, meekness, a sort of innocence . . . I want my wife to respect me, worship me . . .

LUKINISHNA. Hm . . . How could she not worship you, if you are her lawful husband? Ain’t she got no eddication or what?

CAPTAIN. Hold on, don’t interrupt. I don’t need education either. Nowadays you can’t do without education, of course, but there are all sorts of educations. Granted, if your wife’s got French and German and different lingoes it’s very nice: but what’s the good of it, if she doesn’t know how to, say, sew on your buttons? I’m of the educated class, welcome everywhere, I can talk to Prince Kanitelin⁴ the way I’m talking to you now, but my nature is a simple one. I need a simple girl. I don’t need brains. The man should have all the brains, but a female creature can get on without brains.

LUKINISHNA. You’re so right, dearie. Nowdays even the papers write about the brainy ones that they won’t do at all.

CAPTAIN. A fool will love and worship and appreciate my status as a man. She will walk in fear. Whereas a brainy one will eat your bread but won’t appreciate whose bread it is. Go find me a fool . . . Hear me aright: a fool. Have you got anything like that in stock?

LUKINISHNA. I got all sorts in stock (gives it some thought). Which one’s for you? Lots of fools, because even the brainy ones are fools . . . Each of these fools has got her own brains . . . You want a full-fledged fool? (Thinks.) I got this one fool of a girl, but I don’t know if you’d like her . . . Of merchant stock she comes and with a dowry of about five thousand . . . Personally it’s not that she’s not beautiful, but just—neither this nor that . . . a bit scrawny, a bit scraggly . . . Affectionate, refined . . . Loads of loving kindness! She’d give the shirt off her back if anybody asked . . . Oh, and meek . . . Her mother could yank her around by the hair, and you wouldn’t hear a peep out of her — not a blessed word! And she minds her parents, she can be took to church, and when it comes to keeping house . . . But as to what’s up here (puts a finger to her forehead) . . . Don’t blame me, sinner that I am, for speaking my mind, but, to tell you the God’s honest truth: she ain’t got none! A fool . . . She’s quiet, quiet, like a murder victim quiet . . . She sits, nice and quiet, then suddenly out of the blue — up she jumps! Just like you’d scalded her with boiling water. Springs off her chair, like she was scorched, and then the yammering begins . . . She yammers and yammers . . . With no end in sight she yammers . . . Those parents of hers are fools, and the food’s no good, and don’t talk to her like that. And they’ve found nobody she can live with and it’s like they was tormenting the life out of her . . . “You,” she says, “can’t understand me . . . “ The gal’s a fool! The merchant Kashalotov⁵ made a match with her—and she turned him down! Laughed in his face, that’s what . . . A rich merchant, handsome, aligant, like a cute young officer laddy. Or else, sometimes, she’ll take up some stupid little book, go in the pantry and start reading . . .

CAPTAIN. No, that fool doesn’t suit my specifications . . . Find another one (gets up and looks at his watch). For now bon sure.⁶ Time for me to go . . . I’ll go my bachelor’s way . . .

LUKINISHNA. Go, dearie! Happy hunting! (Gets up.) On Saturday night I’ll drop in concerning a bride (goes to the door) . . . Well, now as to that . . . would you be needing a little female companionship along your bachelor’s way?

A. Chekhonte

NOTES

1 Published in Splinters (Oskolki) 38 (September 17, 1883), p. 5.

2 A double-punning name: Sous = Sauce, and So-usy = With a moustache.

3 Literally, the daughter of Luke, but with hints of lukavy, cunning, and luk, onion.

4 Joke name from kanitel, blather, hot air.

5 Joke name from kashalot, sperm whale.

6 Mispronunciation of bon jour, French for “good day.”