The Complete Plays

THE WOOD GOBLIN

In 1888, even before he had finished work on Ivanov, Chekhov suggested to Aleksey Suvorin that they collaborate on a comedy. He drew up a list of characters, episodes, and a distribution of assignments. Suvorin soon dropped out, and Chekhov reworked the play into The Wood Goblin in spring 1889. On May 14, 1889, Chekhov wrote Suvorin:

The play turned out boring, pieced together like a mosaic . . . nowhere in the whole play is there a single lackey or peripheral comic character or little widow. There are eight characters in all and only three of them are episodic. As a rule I tried to avoid superfluity, and I think I have succeeded.

What Chekhov saw as a structural flaw, the play’s mosaic-like quality, would become a characteristic element of his playwriting in the future.

The Wood Goblin was read by the committee that passed on plays for the Petersburg state theaters. Its devastating and unanimous decision was to reject it as a “beautiful dramatized novella,” as Chekhov confided to the actor Nikolay Pavel Svobodin (October 25, 1889). However, the play was solicited by Chekhov’s boyhood friend Solovtsov, who had left Korsh’s theater to start a new one in Moscow with the heiress Mariya Abramova. So The Wood Goblin, with a hastily rewritten fourth act, was first presented at Abramova’s private theater on December 27, 1889, in a very weak production. The role of the beautiful Yelena was taken by the corpulent Mariya Glebova, and, as Chekhov’s younger brother remembered, “to the romantic lead, the actor Roschin-Insarov, making a declaration of love to her was positively incongruous: he called her beautiful, yet he could not get his arms around her to embrace her. Then the glow of the forest fire was such that it aroused laugh-ter.”¹ Dissatisfied, Chekhov withdrew the play, which had been received with indifference.

His dissatisfaction related, however, more to the play’s internal imperfections than to its faulty staging. The problem with The Wood Goblin is that it tries very hard to make a positive statement. It had been preceded by the novella “A Dismal Story,” whose central characters, a played-out scientist and his ward, a despairing actress, have reached an impasse in life. No way out of the sterility that confronts them seems possible. Critics had been dwelling on Chekhov’s pessimism and it was beginning to get under his skin. He was drawn to the popular teachings of Tolstoy, centered around the passive resistance to evil and ascetic way of life, but he was unable to give himself wholly to any doctrine. Still, he experimented with these fashionable beliefs in his new play.

In The Wood Goblin, Chekhov subscribes to the Tolstoyan notion of universal love as a means of unraveling the Gordian knot of social problems. The cast of characters he had drawn up for Suvorin had included two Tolstoyan characters: Anuchin, an old man whose public repentance made him the happiest person in the district, and the pilgrim Fedosy, a plain-speaking and optimistic lay brother of the Mount Athos monastery. All that survives of these characters in The Wood Goblin is a last-act speech of Orlovsky Sr., who relates his midlife crisis and regeneration.

Baldly put, the speech in which Dr. Khrushchov, the “Wood Goblin,” complains that people must treat one another as human beings, without preconceptions and labels, formulates the play’s ideology. The happy ending Chekhov boasted of comes about as the characters discover this idea for themselves. The couples who had been divided by mutual distrust now link up, and stand on the brink of a new life full of truth.

In the first version of The Wood Goblin, this was not entirely clear, and Chekhov worked hard to remove similarities to Ivanov. He radically changed the character of Zheltukhin, originally portrayed as a slogan-spouting liberal, prone to quoting the protest poetry of Nikolay Nekrasov. In the produced version, the characters are evenly divided between the self-centered rationalists (Uncle Georges, his mother, Zheltukhin, the Professor, and Sofiya before her reformation) and the pure in heart, who avoid self-analysis and are spontaneous in their reactions (the Orlovskys, Yulya, Dyadin). Chekhov changed the denouement to point this up. Originally, the Professor was to undergo a change of heart, see the error of his ways, and forgive Yelena, while Fyodor, who had abducted her, would be chastened by news of his father’s death. Instead, the absurd Dyadin is made to make off with Yelena, and Orlovsky Sr. does not die of shock. Now it is Fyodor who undergoes a sudden and unconvincing conversion to simplicity, while the Professor remains obtuse to the end.

“I filled the comedy with good, healthy people, half sympathetic, and a happy ending. The general tone is entirely lyrical,” Chekhov wrote to Pleshcheev, on September 30, 1889. This is a play of conversion, but without overt religious references or a confessional tone. The most important new element in his playwriting is the suppression of a prominent hero in favor of a closely interrelated group. The ties that bind the characters in this neighborhood are more intricate than those in Ivanov.

Khrushchov the Wood Goblin lends his name to the play, not because he is the pivotal figure, but because his epiphany in the last act is the summation of the play’s meaning. In Chekhov’s later plays, a monologue such as his about the need for heroes in Russia would be alloyed by some ironic flaw in the character. Here it is meant to be taken as read. The critic Aleksandr Chu-dakov notes that Khrushchov is perhaps the first hero in Russian drama “whose purpose in life is the preservation of nature,”² but, unlike Astrov, his counterpart in Uncle Vanya, his concern with conservation is not, by itself, a redeeming trait. Merit is not achieved by saving forests or serving science or by any practical activity; pure morality in human relations is of higher value. The crucial turning point for Khrushchov is finding Voinitsky’s diary, which shows him how badly the Wood Goblin had misjudged his fellows. The device is clumsy, a relic of the well-made play, but Chekhov needed it to trigger Khrushchov’s about-face, his awakening when he casts off his suspicions of others.

Both Platonov and Ivanov had centered upon somewhat outstanding individuals corroded by their own cynicism and self-doubt. In The Wood Goblin, those qualities recur in Voinitsky, who, riddled with irony, finds the less complicated natures of Fyodor and Khrushchov appealing. Incapable of change, he has to commit suicide, to leave the stage clear for the reversals of the last act.

Despite the pleas of enthusiasts, Chekhov refused to have the play reprinted. “I hate that play and am trying to forget it,” he wrote to A. I. Urusov, on April 16, 1900. But the ideology, if too blatantly expressed, was to abide. Chekhov’s later plays continue to attribute greater importance to honesty in human relations than to any doctrinaire or programmatic prescriptions for society.

NOTES

1 M. P. Chekhov, Vokrug Chekhova (Moscow: Moskovsky rabochy, 1980), p. 152.

2 A. P. Chudakov, Chekhov’s Poetics, tr. F. J. Cruise and D. Dragt (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1983), p. 210.

THE WOOD GOBLIN¹

Лeший

A Comedy in Four Acts

CHARACTERS

ALEKSANDR VLADIMIROVICH SEREBRYAKOV, a retired professor

YELENA ANDREEVNA, his wife, 27

SOFYA ALEKSANDROVNA (SONYA), his daughter by his first wife, 20

MARIYA VASILYEVNA VOINITSKAYA, the widow of a senior civil servant, mother of the professor’s first wife

YEGOR PETROVICH VOINITSKY, her son

LEONID STEPANOVICH ZHELTUKHIN, a very rich man who studied technology at the university but never earned a degree

YULIYA STEPANOVNA (YULYA), his sister, 18

IVAN IVANOVICH ORLOVSKY, a landowner

FYODOR IVANOVICH, his son

MIKHAIL LVOVICH KHRUSHCHOV, landowner, who has a medical degree

ILYA ILYICH DYADIN

VASILY, Zheltukhin’s servant

SEMYON, a workman at the mill

ACT ONE

The garden on Zheltukhin’s estate. A house with a terrace; on the veranda in front of the house are two tables: a large one, set for lunch, and another smaller one with appetizers. A little after two o’clock.

I

ZHELTUKHIN and YULYA enter from the house.

YULYA. You’d better put on that nice gray suit. This one doesn’t suit you.

ZHELTUKHIN. It doesn’t matter. Trivia.

YULYA. Lyonechka, why are you so grumpy? How can you behave like this on your birthday? You’re being a naughty boy! . . . (Lays her head on his breast.)

ZHELTUKHIN. A little less affection, please!

YULYA (through tears). Lyonechka!

ZHELTUKHIN. Instead of these curdled kisses, all these loving glances and watch stands² made out of little shoes, which are no damned use to me, you should do what I asked you to! How come you didn’t write to the Sere-bryakovs?

YULYA. Lyonechka, I did write!

ZHELTUKHIN. Which one did you write to?

YULYA. Sonechka. I asked her to be sure and come by today, to be sure to come at one. Cross my heart, I did write!

ZHELTUKHIN. But it’s already past two and they aren’t here . . . Oh well, if that’s the way they want it! I’ll have to give it up, nothing’ll come of it . . . Except humiliation, a sense of grievance and nothing more . . . She pays me no attention. I’m not good-looking, I’m uninteresting, there’s nothing romantic about me, and if she did marry me, it would only be out of self-interest . . . for the money! . . .

YULYA. Not good-looking . . . You have no idea what you look like.

ZHELTUKHIN. Oh sure, as if I were blind! My beard grows out of here, out of my neck, not like other people’s . . . A moustache, who the hell knows what kind . . . a nose . . .

YULYA. Why are you pressing down on your cheek?

ZHELTUKHIN. There’s that pain under my eye again.

YULYA. Yes, it is a little bit swollen. Let me kiss it and it’ll go away.

ZHELTUKHIN. Don’t be stupid!

Enter ORLOVSKY, and VOINITSKY.

II

The same, ORLOVSKY, and VOINITSKY.

ORLOVSKY. Lovey, when are we going to eat? It’s past two already!

YULYA. Godfather dear, the Serebryakovs aren’t here yet!

ORLOVSKY. How long are we supposed to wait for them? I want to eat, honey bunch. And so does Yegor Petrovich here.

ZHELTUKHIN (to Voinitsky). Are your folks going to show up?

VOINITSKY. When I left the house, Yelena Andreevna was getting dressed.

ZHELTUKHIN. In other words, they’re sure to show up?

VOINITSKY. Sure is impossible to say. Our V.I.P. may suddenly come down with gout³ or some other whim — and then they’ll stay home.

ZHELTUKHIN. In that case, let’s eat. What’s the point of waiting? (Shouts.) Ilya Ilyich! Sergey Nikodimych!

DYADIN and a few other GUESTS enter

III

The same, DYADIN, and GUESTS.

ZHELTUKHIN. Please start on the appetizers. Please do. (Near the appetizers.) The Serebryakovs haven’t come, Fyodor Ivanych isn’t here, neither is the Wood Goblin . . . They’ve abandoned us!

YULYA. Godfather dear, would you like some vodka?

ORLOVSKY. Just a tiny drop. That’s it . . . That’ll be enough.

DYADIN (tying a napkin around his neck). What a wonderful manager you are, Yuliya Stepanovna! Whether I’m driving across your fields or walking in the shade of your orchard, or contemplating this table, everywhere I see the sovereign power of your magic little hands.⁴ Your good health!

YULYA. I’ve got my hands full, Ilya Ilyich! Yesterday, for instance, Nazarka didn’t drive the turkey chicks into the henhouse, they spent the night in the dewy grass, and today five of the chicks dropped dead.

DYADIN. That shouldn’t happen. The turkey is a delicate fowl.

VOINITSKY (to Dyadin). Waffles, cut me a slice of that ham!

DYADIN. With particular pleasure. It’s a beautiful ham. One of the wonders of the Arabian Nights. (Cuts a slice.) I am slicing it for you, Zhorzhenka, according to all the laws of art. Beethoven and Shakespeare couldn’t slice it like this. Only the knife’s a little dull. (Hones the knife on another knife.)

ZHELTUKHIN (shuddering). Vvvv! . . . Stop that, Waffles! I can’t stand it!

ORLOVSKY. Tell us about it, Yegor Petrovich. What’s going on at your place?

VOINITSKY. Nothing’s going on.

ORLOVSKY. Anything new?

VOINITSKY. Nothing. It’s all old. The way it was last year is the way it is now. As usual, I talk a lot and do very little. My old magpie of a maman goes on babbling about women’s rights; one eye peers into the grave, while the other pores over her high-minded pamphlets, looking for the dawn of a new life.

ORLOVSKY. What about Sasha?

VOINITSKY. The Professor, unfortunately, still hasn’t been nibbled away by the moths. From morn to darkest night he sits alone in the study and writes. “With straining brain and furrowed brow, We write for nights and days, Yet all our poetry somehow Can never meet with praise.”⁵ I feel sorry for the paper! Sonechka reads high-minded pamphlets as she always did and keeps a very high-minded diary.

ORLOVSKY. What a darling, what a dear . . .

VOINITSKY. With my powers of observation I ought to be writing a novel. The subject is begging to be put down on paper. A retired professor, a pedantic old fossil, a guppy with a terminal degree . . . Gout, rheumatism, migraine, liver complaints and all sorts of stuff. As jealous as Othello.⁶ Living reluctantly on his first wife’s estate, because he can’t afford to live in town. Endlessly griping about his bad luck, although as a matter of fact he’s incredibly lucky.

ORLOVSKY. Come now!

VOINITSKY. Of course he is! Just think about the luck he’s had! Let’s put aside the fact that the son of a humble sexton, a seminary student on a tuition scholarship, acquired academic degrees and chairs, the title Your Excellency, married the daughter of a senator,⁷ and so on. That’s not what matters, though. Check this out. For precisely twenty-five years the man reads and writes about art, although he understands absolutely nothing about art. For twenty-five years he chews over other people’s ideas about realism, naturalism, and the rest of that rubbish; for twenty-five years he reads and writes about stuff that intelligent people have known for ages and fools couldn’t care less about—which means, for twenty-five years he’s been pouring the contents of one empty bottle into another emptier bottle. And add to that, what success! What celebrity! What for? Why? What right has he got?

ORLOVSKY (laughs loudly). Envy, envy!

VOINITSKY. Yes, envy! Look at his success with women! Not even Don Juan enjoyed such unqualified success! His first wife, my sister, a beautiful, gentle creature, pure as that blue sky overhead, noble, open-hearted, with more admirers than he had students, loved him as only pure angels can love beings as pure and beautiful as themselves. My mother, his mother-in-law, adores him to this day, and to this day he inspires her with awe and reverence. His second wife, a woman with looks, brains—you’ve seen her—married him when he was an old man, made him a gift of her youth, beauty, independence, her brilliance . . . What for? Why? And such a talent, a fine musician! It’s wonderful the way she plays the piano!

ORLOVSKY. A talented family one and all. An exceptional family.

ZHELTUKHIN. Yes, Sofya Aleksandrovna, for instance, has a magnificent voice. A wonderful soprano! I never heard anything like it in Petersburg. Though, you know, it’s a little forced in the higher octave. Such a pity! The higher octave for me! That higher octave! Ah, if she had that octave, I’ll wager my head, she’d be able to produce . . . something wonderful, believe you me . . . Sorry, gentlemen, I’ve got to have a word with Yulya . . . (Takes Yulya aside.) Send someone on horseback to them. Send a note to say that if they can’t come now, they might at least drop in for dinner. (More quietly.) But don’t act like a fool, don’t embarrass me, write it in good Russian . . . Drop has only one p . . . (Aloud and tenderly.) Please, my dear.

YULYA. All right . . . (Exits.)

DYADIN. They say that the professor’s lady wife, Yelena Andreevna, whose acquaintance I have not the honor of enjoying, is distinguished not only by spiritual beauty, but by physical beauty as well.

ORLOVSKY. Yes, she’s a splendid young lady.

ZHELTUKHIN. She’s faithful to the professor?

VOINITSKY. Sorry to say she is.

ZHELTUKHIN. Why sorry?

VOINITSKY. Because this faithfulness is phony from start to finish. It’s all sound and no sense. To cheat on an old husband you can’t stand—that’s immoral; to try and stifle the vestiges of youth and vital feeling in your-self—that’s not immoral. Where the hell is the sense in that?

DYADIN (in a plaintive voice). Zhorzhenka, I don’t like it when you say things like that. Why, now, honestly . . . I’m even trembling . . . Gentlemen, I don’t possess any talent or flowery eloquence, but allow me to declare without magniloquent phrases as my conscience dictates . . . Gentlemen, anybody who cheats on a wife or husband is, I mean, a disloyal person, someone who might even betray his country!

VOINITSKY. Turn off the waterworks!⁸

DYADIN. Excuse me, Zhorzhenka . . . Ivan Ivanych, Lyonechka, my dear friends, consider the mutability of my fate. It is no secret, it is not veiled by the shadows of obscurity,⁹ that my wife ran away with the man she loved the day after our wedding on account of my unprepossessing looks . . .

VOINITSKY. And was quite right to do so.

DYADIN. Excuse me, gentlemen! In the aftermath of that event I have not shirked my duty . . . I love her to this day, and I’m faithful to her, I help any way I can, and I have bequeathed my estate to the kiddies she bore to the man she loved. I have not shirked my duty and I’m proud of it. I’m proud! Happiness was denied me, but what I did have left was my pride. What about her? Her youth has flown now, her beauty, subject to the laws of nature, has faded, the man she loved has passed away, may he rest in peace . . . What does she have left? (Sits down.) I mean this seriously, and you laugh.

ORLOVSKY. You’re a kindly man, you have a heart of gold, but your talk is so prolix and the way you wave your arms around . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH comes out of the house; he is wearing a sleeveless overcoat of fine cloth and high boots; his chest is covered with decorations, medals, and a massive gold chain with pendants; expensive rings on his fingers.

IV

The same and FYODOR IVANOVICH.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Greetings, lads!

ORLOVSKY (gleefully). Fedyusha my dear, sonny boy!

FYODOR IVANOVICH (to Zheltukhin). Happy birthday . . . grow up to be big and strong . . . (Exchanges greetings with everyone.) Progenitor! Waffles, greetings! I wish you a hearty appetite, and good digestion.

ZHELTUKHIN. Where had you got to? You shouldn’t be so late.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. It’s hot! Got to have some vodka.

ORLOVSKY (admiring him). My dear boy, that’s a magnificent beard you’ve got . . . Gentlemen, isn’t he a beauty? Look him over: is that a beauty?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Here’s to the birthday boy! (Drinks.) The Sere-bryakovs aren’t here?

ZHELTUKHIN. They didn’t come.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Hm . . . And where’s Yulya?

ZHELTUKHIN. I don’t know what’s holding her up in there. It’s time to bring in the meat pie. I’ll call her right away. (Exits.)

ORLOVSKY. Our Lyonechka, the birthday boy, is a bit out of sorts today. Sulky.

VOINITSKY. He’s just a swine.

ORLOVSKY. His nerves are on edge, there’s nothing you can do about it . . .

VOINITSKY. Too much vanity, hence the nerves. If he were standing here and you said that this herring is good, he would immediately take offense: why didn’t you praise him. Pretty much a waste of time and space. But here he comes.

Enter YULYA and ZHELTUKHIN.

V

The same, ZHELTUKHIN, and YULYA.

YULYA. Good afternoon, Fedenka! (Exchanges kisses with Fyodor Ivanovich.) Have a bite, my dear . . . (To Ivan Ivanovich.) Look, godfather, here’s the gift I gave Lyonechka today! (Displays a little shoe to be used as a watch stand.)

ORLOVSKY. My darlin’, my little girl, a tiny shoe! That’s quite something . . .

YULYA. The gold thread alone cost eight and a half rubles. Look at the edging: tiny little pearls, tiny little pearls, tiny little pearls . . . And these are letters: Leonid Zheltukhin. And here in silk thread: “A gift to the one I love . . .”

DYADIN. Please let me have a look at it! Fascinating!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Drop it . . . that’s enough of that! Yulya, have them serve the champagne!

YULYA. Fedenka, that’s for tonight!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Well, why wait—for tonight! Bring it now! Or else I’m leaving. Word of honor, I’m leaving. Where do you keep it? I’ll go get it myself.

YULYA. You’re always interfering with my housekeeping, Fedya. (To Vasily.) Vasily, here’s the key! The champagne’s in the storeroom, you know, in the corner by the sack of raisins, in a basket. Only see to it you don’t break anything.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Vasily, three bottles!

YULYA. They’ll never make a good manager out of you, Fedenka . . . (Serves everyone pie.) Have some more, gentlemen . . . Dinner won’t be for a while yet, not until half-past five . . . They’ll never make anything of you, Fedenka . . . You’re incorrigible.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Look, she’s taken up lecturing!

VOINITSKY. I think someone just drove up . . . Did you hear?

ZHELTUKHIN. Yes . . . It’s the Serebryakovs . . . At last!

VASILY. The Serebryakov family has arrived!

YULYA (críes out). Sonechka! (Runs out.)

VOINITSKY (sings). Let’s go and meet them, let’s go and meet them . . . (Exits.)

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Look at the way they’re rejoicing!

ZHELTUKHIN. The tactlessness of some people! He’s sleeping with the professor’s lady and can’t conceal it.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Who is?

ZHELTUKHIN. That Georges. The way he lavished praise on her just now, before you came, was practically indecent.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. How do you know he’s sleeping with her?

ZHELTUKHIN. You think I’m blind? . . . Besides, it’s the talk of the whole district . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Nonsense. So far nobody is sleeping with her, but I soon shall soon be . . . Understand? I shall!

VI

The same; SEREBRYAKOV, MARIYA VASILYEVNA, VOINITSKY arm in arm with YELENA ANDREEVNA, SONYA, and YULYA enter.

YULYA (kissing Sonya). My dearest! My dearest!

ORLOVSKY (going to meet them). Sasha, greetings, my dear fellow, greetings, my boy! (Exchanges kisses with the Professor.) Are you well? Shall we thank God?

SEREBRYAKOV. How about you, neighbor? You’re the same as ever—bravely done! Most pleased to see you. Been here long?

ORLOVSKY. Got here on Friday. (To MarIya Vasilyevna.) Marya Vasilyevna! How are you getting on, Your Excellency? (Kisses her hand.)

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. My dear . . . (Kisses him on the head.)

SONYA. Godfather dear!

ORLOVSKY. Sonechka, dear heart! (Kisses her.) My little dove, my little canary . . .

SONYA. Your face is just as kind, sentimental, sweet as ever . . .

ORLOVSKY. And you’ve got taller and prettier and all grown up, dear heart. . .

SONYA. Well, how are you, generally speaking? Are you well?

ORLOVSKY. Frightfully well!

SONYA. Good for you, godfather! (To Fyodor Ivanovich.) And I was ignoring the elephant in the room.¹⁰ (Exchanges kisses with him.) Sunburned, bristly . . . a regular spider!

YULYA. Dearest!

ORLOVSKY (to Serebryakov). How’s life treating you, neighbor?

SEREBRYAKOV. All right . . . And you?

ORLOVSKY. What could be wrong with me? I’m living it up! I turned my estate over to my son, married off my daughters to good people, and now I’m the freest man going. I know how to have a good time!

DYADIN (to Serebryakov). Your Excellency, you chose to be a bit late. The temperature of the pie has gone down considerably. May I introduce myself: Ilya Ilyich Dyadin, or, as some people very wittily express it on account of my pockmarked face, Waffles.

SEREBRYAKOV. Pleased to meet you.

DYADIN. Madame! Mademoiselle! (Bows to Yelena Andreevna and Sonya). These are all friends of mine, Your Excellency. Once I possessed a large fortune, but owing to domestic vicissitudes, or, as the expression goes in intellectual circles, for reasons over which the editor has no control, I had to relinquish my share to my brother, who, on a certain unhappy occasion, was short seventy thousand rubles of government money. My profession is the exploitation of the tempestuous elements. I make the stormy waves turn the wheel of a mill, which I rent from my friend the Wood Goblin.

VOINITSKY. Waffles, turn off the waterworks!

DYADIN. I shall always pay my reverent respects (bows down to the ground) to the luminaries of science, who adorn our national horizon. Forgive me the audacious dream of paying your excellency a visit and beguiling my heart with a colloquy about the latest scientific findings.

SEREBRYAKOV. Please do come. I shall be delighted.

SONYA. Now, do tell us, godfather . . . Where did you spend the winter? Where did you disappear to?

ORLOVSKY. I was in Gmunden, I was in Paris, Nice, London, dear heart . . .

SONYA. That’s wonderful! You lucky man!

ORLOVSKY. Come with me in the fall! Would you like to?

SONYA (sings). “Tempt me not, it dare not be . . .”¹¹

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Don’t sing after lunch, or else your husband’s wife will be a fool.

DYADIN. Now, it would be interesting to observe this table à vol d’oiseau.¹² What a fascinating nosegay! A combination of grace, beauty, profound learning, swee . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH. What a fascinating tongue! What the hell is this? You sound as if somebody were shaving your back with a carpenter’s plane . . .

Laughter.

ORLOVSKY (to Sonya). And you, dear heart, are still not married . . .

VOINITSKY. For pity’s sake, who’s she supposed to marry? Humboldt is dead, Edison’s in America, Lassalle’s dead too¹³. . . The other day I found her diary on the table: this big! I open it up and read: “No, I shall never fall in love . . . Love is the egocentric attraction of my self to an object of the opposite sex . . .” And who the hell knows what else is in it? “Transcenden-tally, the culminating point of the integral principle” . . . phooey! And where did you go to school?

SONYA. Leave it to others to be ironical, you shouldn’t, Uncle Georges . . .

VOINITSKY. What are you getting angry about?

SONYA. If you say another word, one of us will have to go home. You or I . . .

ORLOVSKY (laughs loudly). Why, what a temper!

VOINITSKY. Yes, a temper, I grant you that . . . (To Sonya.) Well, your little paw! Give me your little paw! (Kisses her hand.) Peace and harmony . . . I won’t do it again.

VII

The same and KHRUSHCHOV.

KHRUSHCHOV (coming out of the house). Why aren’t I a painter? What a wonderful composition!

ORLOVSKY (gleefully). Misha! My dear little godson!

KHRUSHCHOV. Many happy returns to the birthday boy! Greeting, Yulechka, how pretty you look today! Godfather! (Exchanges kisses with Orlovsky.) Sofya Aleksandrovna . . . (Greets everyone.)

ZHELTUKHIN. Well, how can a person be so late? Where were you?

KHRUSHCHOV. With a patient.

YULYA. The pie’s gone cold long ago.

KHRUSHCHOV. Never mind, Yulechka, I’ll eat it cold. Where should I sit?

SONYA. Sit down here . . . (Offers him the place beside her.)

KHRUSHCHOV. The weather’s splendid today, and I’ve got a hell of an appetite . . . Hold on, I’ll have some vodka . . . (Drinks.) To the birthday boy! I’ll try this little pie . . . Yulechka, kiss this pie, it’ll make it tastier . . .

She kisses it.

Merci. How are you getting on, godfather? I haven’t seen you for a long time.

ORLOVSKY. Yes, we haven’t met for quite a while. I was abroad, you see.

KHRUSHCHOV. I heard, I heard . . . I envied you. Fyodor, how about you?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. I’m all right, your good wishes are our bulwark never-failing . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. How’s business?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. I can’t complain. We earn a living. Only, pal, there’s too much back and forth. Wears me down. From here to the Caucasus, from the Caucasus back here, from here back to the Caucasus — and it never ends, you’re on the go like a maniac. After all, I’ve got two estates there!

KHRUSHCHOV. I know.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. I spend my time advertising for settlers and all I attract is tarantulas and scorpions. My business is going all right for the most part, but as for “down, down, ye surging passions”¹⁴—it’s the same old story.

KHRUSHCHOV. In love, of course?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. On which account, Wood Goblin, I need a drink. (Drinks.) Ladies and gentlemen, never fall in love with married women! Word of honor, it’s better to be wounded in the shoulder and shot in the leg, like your humble servant, than love a married woman . . . So much trouble it’s simply . . .

SONYA. Hopeless?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. What a word to use! Hopeless . . . There’s nothing hopeless under the sun. Hopeless, unrequited love, oohing and aahing— that’s just self-indulgence. You only have only to apply willpower . . . If I will my gun not to misfire, it won’t. If I will a young lady to love me, she’ll love me. Just like that, Sonya old pal. And once I’ve got my eye on a woman, I think it’ll be easier for her to fly to the moon than get away from me.

SONYA. Aren’t you a terror . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH. You won’t get away from me, no! I wouldn’t have to say a dozen words to her, before she’s in my power . . . Yes . . . I only have to say to her: “Madam, every time you look out a window, you must remember me. I will it.” Which means, she’ll remember me a thousand times a day. That’s not all, I bombard her with letters on a daily basis.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Letters are an unreliable medium. She may receive them but not read them.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. You think so? Hm . . . I’ve lived on this earth thirty-five years, and have never yet met the phenomenal woman who has the fortitude not to open a letter.

ORLOVSKY (admiring him). How do you like that? My sonny boy, my beauty! I was just the same. Down to the last detail! Only I didn’t go to war, just drank vodka and wasted money—terrible way to carry on!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. I do love her, Misha, seriously, excruciatingly . . . She only has to say the word and I would give her all I’ve got . . . I’d carry her off to my place in the Caucasus, the mountains, we would live in clover . . . Yelena Andreevna, I would protect her, like a faithful hound, and I’d treat her like in that song our marshal of nobility¹⁵ sings, “And thou shalt be queen of the world, my love for all eternity.”¹⁶ Ech, she doesn’t know the happiness she’s missing!

KHRUSHCHOV. Who is this lucky creature?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing . . . But that’s enough about that. Now let’s have a song from a different opera. I remember, about ten years ago—Lyonya was still in high school at the time—we were celebrating his birthday just as we are now. I was riding home from here, and at my right hand sat Sonya, and at my left Yulka, and both were clinging to my beard. Gentlemen, let’s drink to the health of the friends of my youth, Sonya and Yulya!

DYADIN (laughs loudly). This is fascinating! This is fascinating!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Once when the war was over¹⁷ I was getting drunk with a Turkish pasha in Trebizond . . . He starts asking me . . .

DYADIN (interrupting). Gentlemen, let’s drink a toast to distinguished relations! Vivat friendship! Long may it thrive!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Stop, stop, stop! Sonya, please pay attention! I’m going to make a wager, damn my eyes! I am putting three hundred rubles down on the table! After lunch let’s play a round of croquet, and I bet I’ll make it through all the hoops and back in one go.

SONYA. I’d accept, only I haven’t got three hundred rubles.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. If you lose, you’ll sing to me forty times.

SONYA. It’s a deal.

DYADIN. This is fascinating! This is fascinating!

YELENA ANDREEVNA (looking at the sky). What kind of bird just flew by?

ZHELTUKHIN. It’s a hawk.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Ladies and gentlemen, to the health of the hawk!

SONYA bursts out laughing.

ORLOVSKY. Well, our girl’s off and running now! What’s got into you?

KHRUSHCHOV bursts out laughing.

And what’s come over you?

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. Sophie, that’s indecorous!

KHRUSHCHOV. Ugh, sorry, my friends . . . I’ll be over it right away, right away . . .

ORLOVSKY. That’s what you call idle laughter.

VOINITSKY. Just point a finger at the two of them, and they’ll burst out laughing. Sonya! (Shows her a finger.) Here, look . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. That’s enough! (Looks at his watch.) Well, Mikhail was a jolly old soul, he called for his food and called for his bowl, and now his time is up. It’s time to go.

SONYA. Where are you off to?

KHRUSHCHOV. To see a patient. My medical practice is as distasteful as a shrewish wife, or a long winter . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. Excuse me, and yet medicine is your profession, your vocation, so to speak . . .

VOINITSKY (ironically). He’s got another vocation. He excavates peat from his land.

SEREBRYAKOV. What?

VOINITSKY. Peat. Some engineer figured it out, black on white, that his land contains seven hundred and twenty thousand rubles’ worth of peat. No joke.

KHRUSHCHOV. I don’t excavate peat for profit.

VOINITSKY. What do you excavate it for then?

KHRUSHCHOV. So you won’t cut down trees.

VOINITSKY. Why shouldn’t I cut them down? To hear you talk, forests exist only so that lads and lassies can play “peek-a-boo” among the trees.

KHRUSHCHOV. I never said that.

VOINITSKY. And everything I’ve been honored to hear from you so far in defense of forests is old, irrelevant, and tendentious. Excuse me, please. I’m not criticizing without good reason, I practically know your speeches for the defense by heart . . . For instance . . . (Raising his voice and gesticulating, as if imitating Khrushchov.) O, my friends, you destroy the forests, but they beautify the land, they teach people to understand beauty and inspire them with a sense of grandeur. Forests alleviate a harsh climate. In lands where the climate is mild, less energy is spent on the struggle with nature and therefore human beings there are milder and more delicate; there people are beautiful, athletic, very sensitive, their speech is refined, their movements graceful. There art and sciences flourish, their philosophy is not gloomy, their attitude to women is full of exquisite chivalry. And so on and so forth . . . Which is all very charming, but not convincing, so allow me to go on stoking my stoves with logs and building my sheds out of wood.

KHRUSHCHOV. Chop down forests when it’s absolutely necessary, but why destroy them? All the Russian forests are toppling beneath the axe, the habitats of birds and beasts are dwindling, tens of thousands of trees are perishing, rivers are running shallow and drying up, gorgeous natural scenery is disappearing irretrievably, and all because lazy human beings can’t be bothered to bend down and pick up fuel from the earth. A person has to be an unreasoning barbarian (pointing at the trees) to destroy what cannot be re-created. Human beings are endowed with reason and creative faculties in order to enhance what is given to them, but so far they have not created but destroyed. Forests are ever fewer and fewer, rivers dry up, wildlife is wiped out, the climate is spoiled, and every day the earth grows more impoverished and ugly. You stare at me sarcastically, and everything I say strikes you as old and frivolous, but when I walk through the peasants’ forests that I have saved from being chopped down, or when I hear the wind rustling in my stand of saplings, planted by my own hands, I realize that the climate is to some slight degree in my control, and if, a thousand years from now, humanity is happy, then even I will be partially responsible. When I plant a birch tree, and then see how it grows green and sways in the wind, my soul swells with pride at the awareness that I am helping God create an organism.

FYODOR IVANOVICH (interrupting). Your health, Wood Goblin!

VOINITSKY. That’s all very well, but if you were to consider the matter not from a pulp-fiction viewpoint, but from a scientific one, then . . .

SONYA. Uncle Georges, you’re talking through your hat. Be quiet!

KHRUSHCHOV. As a matter of fact, Yegor Petrovich, let’s not talk about this. Please.

VOINITSKY. As you like.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. Ah!

SONYA. What’s the matter, Granny?

MARIYA VASILYEVNA (to Serebryakov). I forgot to tell you, Aleksandr . . . I must be losing my memory . . . today I got a letter from Kharkov from Pavel Alekseevich . . . He sent his regards . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. Thank you, delighted.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. He sent his new pamphlet and asked me to show it you.

SEREBRYAKOV. Interesting?

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. Interesting, but rather peculiar. He opposes the very thing he was defending seven years ago. It’s very, very typical of our times. Never have people betrayed their convictions as frivolously as they do now. It’s appalling!

VOINITSKY. It’s not at all appalling. Have some carp, maman.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. But I want to talk!

VOINITSKY. For fifty years now we’ve been talking about influences and factions, it’s high time we stopped.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. For some reason you don’t like to listen when I talk. Pardon me, Georges, but this last year you have changed so much that I utterly fail to recognize you . . . You used to be a man of steadfast convictions, a shining light . . .

VOINITSKY. Oh yes! I was a shining light but no one ever basked in my rays. May I leave the table? I was a shining light . . . Don’t rub salt in my wounds! Now I’m forty-seven. Before last year I was the same as you, deliberately trying to cloud my vision with all these abstractions and book learning to keep from seeing real life — and I thought I was doing the right thing. And now, if you only knew, what a big idiot I feel myself to be for having wasted my time so stupidly when I could have had everything that’s withheld from me now by my old age!

SEREBRYAKOV. Hold on! Georges, you seem to be blaming your former convictions for something . . .

SONYA. That’s enough, Papa! It’s boring!

SEREBRYAKOV. Hold on. You are indeed blaming your former convictions for something. But they aren’t to blame, you are. You have forgotten that convictions without deeds are a dead letter. One must take action.¹⁸

VOINITSKY. Take action? Not everyone is capable of being a perpetual-motion writing machine.

SEREBRYAKOV. What do you mean by that?

VOINITSKY. Nothing. Let’s change the subject. We’re not at home.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. I really am losing my memory . . . . I forgot to remind you, Aleksandr, to take your drops before lunch. I brought them along, but I forgot to remind you . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. You needn’t have.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. But after all you’re a sick man, Aleksandr! You’re a very sick man!

SEREBRYAKOV. Why shout it from the housetops? Old, sick, old, sick . . . that’s all I ever hear! (To Zheltukhin.) Leonid Stepanych, may I leave the table and go inside? It’s rather hot here and the mosquitoes are ferocious.

ZHELTUKHIN. Please do. Lunch is over.

SEREBRYAKOV. Thank you. (Exits into the house, followed by Marya Vasilyevna.)

YULYA (to her brother). See to the professor! It’s impolite!

ZHELTUKHIN (to her). The hell with him! (Exits.)

DYADIN. Yulya Stepanovna, may I thank you from the bottom of my heart. (Kisses her hand.)

YULYA. Don’t mention it, Ilya Ilyich! You’ve eaten so little . . .

They thank her.

Don’t mention it, gentlemen! You all ate so little!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Well, gents, what shall we do now? Let’s go right now to the croquet lawn and settle our wager . . . and after that?

YULYA. After that we’ll have dinner.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. And after that?

KHRUSHCHOV. After that you can all come to my place. In the evening we’ll organize a fishing party on the lake.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Excellent.

DYADIN. Fascinating.

SONYA. Let me get this straight, gentlemen . . . In other words, right now we’re going to the croquet lawn to settle the wager . . . Then we’ll have an early dinner with Yulya and about seven we’ll drive over to the Woo . . . I mean, to Mikhail Lvovich’s. Wonderful. Let’s go, Yulechka, and get the balls. (She and YULYA exit into the house.)

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Vasily, bring the wine to the croquet lawn! We’ll drink to the health of the winner. Well, my old progenitor, let’s take part in this noble game.

ORLOVSKY. Wait, my own dear boy, I have to sit with the professor for about five minutes, otherwise it would seem impolite. One has to observe etiquette. Meanwhile, play my ball, and I’ll be there soon . . . (Exits into the house.)

DYADIN. I shall go at once and listen to the most learned Aleksandr Vladi-mirovich. I anticipate a sublime pleasure, whi . . .

VOINITSKY. I’m sick to death of you, Waffles. Go on.

DYADIN. I’m going, sir. (Exits into the house.)

FYODOR IVANOVICH (going into the garden, sings). “And thou shalt be queen of the world, my love for all eternity . . .”(Exits.)

KHRUSHCHOV. I’m going to slip away nice and quiet. (To Voinitsky.) Yegor Petrovich, I sincerely entreat you, let’s never talk about forests or medicine again. I don’t know why, but when you launch into that sort of talk, for the rest of the day I feel as if I’ve been eating my dinner out of a rusty pot. My respects! (Exits.)

VIII

YELENA ANDREEVNA and VOINITSKY.

VOINITSKY. A narrow-minded fellow. Everyone is entitled to talk nonsense, but I don’t like it when they talk it with deep feeling.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Well, Georges, you behaved impossibly again! You had to provoke Mariya Vasilyevna and Aleksandr with talk about perpetual motion! It’s all so petty!

VOINITSKY. And what if I hate him?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. There’s no point in hating Aleksandr, he’s the same as anybody else . . .

SONYA and YULYA cross into the garden with the croquet balls and mallets.

VOINITSKY. If you could see your face, your movements . . . What an indolent life you lead! Ah, the indolence of it!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Ah, indolent and boring as well!

Pause.

Everyone insults my husband to my face, unconstrained by my presence. Everyone throws me sympathetic glances: unhappy creature, she’s got an old husband! Everybody, even very respectable people, want me to leave Aleksandr . . . This concern for me, all these compassionate glances and sighs of pity come down to one thing. It’s what the Wood Goblin was saying just now, you all recklessly chop down forests, and soon nothing will be left on earth. That’s just how you recklessly destroy a human being, and soon, thanks to you, there won’t be any loyalty or purity or capacity for self-sacrifice left on earth. Why can’t you look at a decent woman with indifference if she isn’t yours? Because — that Wood Goblin’s right—inside all of you there lurks a demon of destruction. You have no pity for forests or birds or women or one another . . .

VOINITSKY. I don’t like this philosophizing!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Tell that Fyodor Ivanych that I’m fed up with his impertinence. It’s beginning to be sickening. To look me in the face and tell me in front of everybody about his love for some married woman— wonderfully witty!

Voices in the garden: “Bravo! Bravo!”

And yet, how nice that Wood Goblin is! He stops by our place rather often, but I’m inhibited and haven’t once had a proper chat with him, haven’t shown him much affection. He probably thinks that I’m ill tempered and stuck-up. No doubt, Georges, that’s why we’re such friends, you and I, we’re both exasperating, tiresome people! Exasperating! Don’t look at me that way, I don’t like it.

VOINITSKY. How else can I look at you if I love you? You’re my happiness, life, my youth! . . . I know, my chances of reciprocity are practically nil, but I don’t want anything, just let me look at you, hear your voice . . .

IX

The same and SEREBRYAKOV

SEREBRYAKOV (at the window). Lenochka, where are you?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Here.

SEREBRYAKOV. Come and sit with us a bit, my dear . . . (Disappears.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA exits into the house.

VOINITSKY (following her). Let me talk about my love, don’t drive me away, and that alone will be my greatest joy.

Curtain

ACT TWO

Dining room in Serebryakov’s house. A sideboard, and a dining table in the middle of the room. Past one o’clock at night. We can hear the watchman tapping in the garden.¹⁹

I

SEREBRYAKOV (sits in an armchair before an open window and drowses) and YELENA ANDREEVNA (sits beside him and drowses too).

SEREBRYAKOV (waking). Who’s there? Sonya, you?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I’m here . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. You, Lenochka . . . The pain’s unbearable!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Your lap rug’s fallen on the floor . . . (Wraps up his legs.) Aleksandr, I’ll close the window.

SEREBRYAKOV. No, I’m suffocating . . . I just now started to doze off and dreamed that my left leg belonged to somebody else . . . I woke up with the agonizing pain. No, it isn’t gout, more like rheumatism. What’s the time now?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Twenty past one.

Pause.

SEREBRYAKOV. In the morning see if we’ve got a Batyushkov²⁰ in the library. I think we have him.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Huh? . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. Look for Batyushkov’s works in the morning. I seem to remember we had a copy. But why am I finding it so hard to breathe?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. You were tired. Second night without sleep.

SEREBRYAKOV. They say that Turgenev had gout that developed into angina pectoris?²¹ I’m afraid I may have it too. Wretched, repulsive old age. Damn it to hell. When I got old, I began to disgust myself. Yes, and all the rest of you, I daresay, are disgusted to look at me.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. You talk about your old age as if it was our fault you’re old.

SEREBRYAKOV. You’re the first one to be disgusted by me.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. This is tiresome! (She moves away and sits at a distance.)

SEREBRYAKOV. Of course, you’re in the right. I’m no fool and I understand. You’re young, healthy, beautiful, enjoy life, while I’m an old man, practically a corpse. That’s it, isn’t it? Have I got it right? And, of course, it was stupid of me to live this long. But wait a while, I’ll soon liberate you all. I can’t manage to hang on much longer.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Sasha, I’m worn out . . . If I’ve earned any reward for these sleepless nights, all I ask of you is: be quiet! For God’s sake be quiet. That’s all I ask.

SEREBRYAKOV. It turns out that thanks to me you’re all worn out, bored, wasting your youth, I’m the only one enjoying life and having a good time. Oh, yes, of course!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Do be quiet! You’ve run me ragged!

SEREBRYAKOV. I’ve run all of you ragged . . . Of course.

YELENA ANDREEVNA (weeping). This is unbearable! Say it, what do you want from me?

SEREBRYAKOV. Not a thing.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Well then, be quiet; I beg of you.

SEREBRYAKOV. Funny, isn’t it: let Georges start talking or that old she-idiot Mariya Vasilyevna — and nothing happens, everyone listens, but let me say just one word, watch how they all start feeling sorry for themselves. Even my voice is disgusting. Well, suppose I am disgusting, I’m selfish, I’m a tyrant, but surely in my old age haven’t I got a right to be selfish? Surely I’ve earned it? I had a hard life. Ivan Ivanych and I were students together. Ask him. He kicked up his heels, consorted with gypsy girls, looked after me, and all the while I lived in a cheap, squalid room in a boarding house, worked night and day like an ox, starved and fretted because I was living off of somebody else. Later I was in Heidelberg and never saw Heidelberg; I was in Paris and never saw Paris: the whole time I sat indoors and worked. Once I got my chair, I devoted my whole life to the service of learning, as the saying goes, faithfully and honestly as I’m doing even now. Surely, I ask you, I’ve earned the right to a peaceful old age, to have people show me some consideration?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. No one is disputing your rights.

The window rattles in the wind.

The wind’s rising, I’ll close the window. (Closes it.) It’ll rain presently. No one is disputing your rights.

Pause. The WATCHMAN in the garden taps and sings a song.

SEREBRYAKOV. To labor all one’s life in the cause of learning, to grow accustomed to one’s study, to the lecture hall, to esteemed colleagues and suddenly, with no rhyme or reason, to find oneself in this mausoleum, to spend every day seeing stupid people, listening to trivial chitchat . . . I want to live, I love success, I love celebrity, fame, and here it’s like being in exile. Every minute yearning for the past, watching the successes of others, fearing death . . . I can’t do it! I haven’t got the strength! And on top of that they won’t forgive me my old age!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Wait, be patient: in five or six years I too shall be old.

Enter SONYA.

II

The same and SONIYA.

SONYA. I don’t know why the doctor is taking so long. I told Stepan that if he couldn’t find the district doctor²² to go and get the Wood Goblin.

SEREBRYAKOV. What do I care about your Wood Goblin? He understands as much about medicine as I do about astronomy.

SONYA. Just for your gout we can’t send for a whole medical school.

SEREBRYAKOV. I won’t even give that maniac²³ the time of day.

SONYA. Have it your way. (Sits.) It’s all the same to me.

SEREBRYAKOV. What’s the time now?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Nearly two.

SEREBRYAKOV. It’s stifling . . . Sonya, get me the drops from the table!

SONYA. Right away. (Gives him the drops.)

SEREBRYAKOV (aggravated). Ah, not those! A person can’t ask for a thing!

SONYA. Please don’t be crotchety. Some people may care for it, but don’t try it on me, if you’ll be so kind. I do not like it.

SEREBRYAKOV. This girl has an impossible temper. What are you getting angry for?

SONYA. And why do you go on whining so miserably? For pity’s sake, someone would think you actually were miserable. There are few people on this earth as lucky as you are.

SEREBRYAKOV. Yes, of course! I’m very, very lucky!

SONYA. Naturally, you’re lucky . . . And if you do have gout, you know perfectly well that the attack will be gone by morning. What’s there to moan about? What self-importance!

Enter VOINITSKY in dressing gown, holding a candle.

III

The same and VOINITSKY.

VOINITSKY. Clear out now! Hélène and Sonya, go to bed. I’ve come to take over for you.

SEREBRYAKOV (terrified). No, no, don’t leave me with him! No! He’ll talk me blue in the face!

VOINITSKY. But they’ve got to get some rest! This is the second night they’ve had no sleep.

SEREBRYAKOV. Let them go to bed, but you go away too. Thank you. I implore you. For the sake of our former friendship, don’t protest. We’ll talk later.

VOINITSKY. Our former friendship . . . I admit this is news to me.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Be quiet, Georges.

SEREBRYAKOV. My dear, don’t leave me alone with him! He’ll talk me blue in the face!

VOINITSKY. This is starting to get ridiculous.

KHRUSHCHOV’s voice offstage: “They’re in the dining room? This way? Please have them see to my horse!”

The doctor’s come.

IV

The same and KHRUSHCHOV.

KHRUSHCHOV. How do you like this weather? The rain kept on my tail, and I barely got away from it. Good evening. (Exchanges greetings.)

SEREBRYAKOV. Excuse us for troubling you. I didn’t ask for this at all.

KHRUSHCHOV. There, there, it doesn’t matter! But what have you been getting up to, Aleksandr Vladimirovich? Aren’t you ashamed to be under the weather? Dear, dear, that’s naughty! What’s the matter with you?

SEREBRYAKOV. Why do doctors always talk in that condescending tone of voice?

KHRUSHCHOV (laughs). Well, you shouldn’t be so observant. (Gently.) Let’s go to bed. You’re not comfortable here. In bed you’ll be warmer and more peaceful. Let’s go . . . I’ll examine you there and . . . and everything will be all right.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Listen to him, Sasha, go on.

KHRUSHCHOV. If it hurts you to walk, we’ll carry you there in this armchair.

SEREBRYAKOV. Never mind, I can do it . . . I can walk . . . (Gets up.) Only they’ve troubled you for nothing.

KHRUSHCHOV and SONYA take him under the arms.

Besides, I’m not a great believer in . . . pharmaceuticals. Why are you escorting me? I can do it myself. (Exits with KHRUSHCHOV and SONYA.)

V

YELENA ANDREEVNA and VOINITSKY.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I’ve worried myself sick over him. Can hardly stand on my feet.

VOINITSKY. He makes you sick and I make me sick. This is the third night now I haven’t slept.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. There’s something oppressive about this house. Your mother hates everything except her pamphlets and the Professor; the Professor is irritable, won’t trust me, is afraid of you; Sonya’s nasty to her father, nasty to me and won’t talk to me; you hate my husband and openly despise your mother; I’m a nuisance, irritable and today some twenty times I was ready to burst into tears . . . In short, it’s all-out war. I keep asking myself, what’s the point of this war, what’s it for?

VOINITSKY. Let’s drop the philosophizing!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. There’s something oppressive about this house. Georges, you’re an educated, intelligent man, I should think you’d understand that the world is being destroyed not by criminals, not by fires, but by underhanded hatred, enmity between decent people, all this petty bickering, which goes unnoticed by those who refer to our house as a haven for highbrows. Help me to bring everyone together! I haven’t got the strength to do it on my own.

VOINITSKY. First bring the two of us together! My darling . . . (Clutches her hand.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Stop it! (Extricates her hand.) Go away!

VOINITSKY. Any moment now the rain will end, and everything in nature will be refreshed and breathe easy. I’ll be the only thing not refreshed by the storm. Day and night, like an incubus, the idea chokes me that my life has been wasted irretrievably. I’ve got no past, it’s been stupidly squandered on trivialities, and the present is horrible in its absurdity. Here, take my life and my love; what am I to do with them? My better feelings are fading away for no reason at all, like a sunbeam trapped at the bottom of a mineshaft, and I’m fading along with them . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Whenever you talk to me about your love, it’s as if I go numb and don’t know what to say. Forgive me, there’s nothing I can say to you. (About to go.) Good-night!

VOINITSKY (blocks her path). And if only you had any idea how I suffer at the thought that right beside me in this house another life is fading away— yours! What are you waiting for? What damned philosophizing stands in your way? Face the fact that the highest morality does not consist of clapping your youth in irons and trying to stifle your zest for life . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA (stares fixedly at him). Georges, you’re drunk!

VOINITSKY. Could be, could be . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Is Fyodor Ivanovich in your room?

VOINITSKY. He’s spending the night in my room. Could be, could be. Anything could be!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. So you were drinking heavily today? What for?

VOINITSKY. It makes me feel alive somehow . . . Don’t stop me, Hélène!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. You never used to drink and you never used to talk as much as you do now. Go to bed! You’re boring me. And tell your friend Fyodor Ivanych that he doesn’t stop pestering me, I shall take measures. Go on!

VOINITSKY (clutching her hand). My darling . . . wonderful woman!

Enter KHRUSHCHOV.

VI

The same and KHRUSHCHOV.

KHRUSHCHOV. Yelena Andreevna, Aleksandr Vladimirovich is asking for you.

YELENA ANDREEVNA (extricating her hand from Voinitsky). Right away! (Exits.)

KHRUSHCHOV (to Voinitsky). There’s nothing sacred to you! You and the dear lady who just left should bear in mind that her husband was once the husband of your sister and that a young girl is living with you under the same roof! Your affair is already the talk of the whole district. What a disgrace! (Goes out to his patient.)

VOINITSKY (alone). She left . . .

Pause.

Ten years ago I met her at my poor sister’s. Then she was seventeen and I was thirty-seven. Why didn’t I fall in love with her then and propose to her? After all it could have been! And now she’d be my wife . . . Yes . . . Now both of us would be awakened by the storm; she’d be frightened by the thunder and I’d hold her in my arms and whisper, “Don’t be afraid, I’m here.” Oh, marvelous thoughts, wonderful, it makes me laugh . . . but, my God, the thoughts are snarled up in my head . . . Why am I old? Why doesn’t she understand me? Her speechifying, indolent morality, indolent drivel about destroying the world — it’s profoundly hateful to me . . .

Pause.

Why was I born so nasty? How I envy that bad boy Fyodor or that idiotic Wood Goblin! They’re spontaneous, sincere idiots . . . They don’t suffer this damned, poisonous irony . . .

Enter FYODOR IVANOVICH, wrapped in a blanket.

VII

VOINITSKY and FYODOR IVANOVICH.

FYODOR IVANOVICH (in the doorway). You alone here? No ladies? (Enters.) The storm woke me up. An impressive little downpour. What’s the time now?

VOINITSKY. How the hell should I know!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Could have sworn I heard the voice of Yelena Andreevna.

VOINITSKY. She was here a moment ago.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Magnificent woman! (Spots the medicine bottles on the table) What’s all this? Peppermint drops? (Tastes.) Yes indeed, a magnificent woman . . . Is the Professor sick or what?

VOINITSKY. Sick.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. I don’t understand that kind of existence. They say that the ancient Greeks would fling feeble and sickly children off Mont Blanc into an abyss. His sort should be flung in too!

VOINITSKY (irritated). Not Mont Blanc, but the Tarpeian rock.²⁴ What crass ignorance! . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Well, one rock’s much like any other . . . as if I gave a good goddam? Why are you so mopey today? Feel sorry for the Professor or what?

VOINITSKY. Leave me alone.

Pause.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Or else, maybe, in love with the Professor’s lady? Huh? That’s it! It could happen . . . sigh . . . only watch out: if the gossip going round the district has only one hundredth of a particle of truth in it and I find out about it, don’t bother pleading for mercy, I’ll fling you off the Tarpeian rock . . .

VOINITSKY. She’s my friend.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Already?

VOINITSKY. What’s that mean-”already”?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. A woman can be a man’s friend only in the following sequence: first, an acquaintance, next, a mistress, and thereafter a friend.

VOINITSKY. A vulgar philosophy.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. On which account we’ve got to have a drink. Let’s go, I think I’ve still got some Chartreuse left. Let’s have a drink. And when it’s light, we’ll head over to my place. Want to go for a rod? I’ve got a bookkeeper, Luka, who never says “ride,” always says, “rod.”²⁵ Terrible crook. So, want to go for a rod? (Seeing SONYA enter.) Heavens to Betsy, ‘scuse me, I’m not wearing a tie. (Runs out.)

VIII

VOINITSKY and SONYA.

SONYA. So, Uncle Georges, you and Fedka were drinking champagne again and riding around in the troika. Birds of a feather flock together. Well, he’s been an incorrigible, natural-born playboy for quite some time, but are you? At your age it doesn’t suit you at all.

VOINITSKY. Age has nothing to do with it. When life has no reality, people live on illusions. After all it’s better than nothing.

SONYA. All our hay is mown; Gerasim told me today that everything’s rotting in the rain, and you’re obsessed with illusions. (Alarmed.) Uncle, there are tears in your eyes!

VOINITSKY. What tears? Nothing of the sort . . . don’t be silly . . . Just now the way you looked at me like your poor mother. My precious . . . (Avidly kisses her hands and face.) My dear sister . . . my darling sister . . . Where is she now? If only she knew! Ah, if only she knew!

SONYA. What? Uncle, knew what?

VOINITSKY. Oppressive, wrong . . . Never mind . . .

Enter KHRUSHCHOV

Later . . . Never mind . . . I’m going . . . (Goes.)

IX

SONYA and KHRUSHCHOV.

KHRUSHCHOV. Your daddy absolutely refuses to obey orders. I tell him it’s gout, and he says it’s rheumatism; I ask him to lie down, he sits up. (Takes his peaked cap.) Nerves.

SONYA. He’s spoiled. Put your cap away. Wait until the rain is over. Would you like a bite to eat?

KHRUSHCHOV. Yes, I suppose so.

SONYA. I love midnight snacks. I think there’s something in the sideboard. (Rummaging in the sideboard) Does he really need a doctor? What he needs is a dozen ladies sitting beside him, staring into his eyes and moaning, “Professor!” Here, have some cheese . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. You shouldn’t talk about your own father like that. I agree, he’s a difficult case, but if you compare him with the rest, all those Uncle Georgeses and Ivan Ivanychs aren’t worth his little finger.

SONYA. Here’s a bottle of something. I’m not referring to my father, but to the great man. I love my father, but great men with their Byzantine ceremonials have me bored to tears.

They sit down.

What a downpour!

Lightning.

Look!

KHRUSHCHOV. The storm’s passing over, we’ll only catch the tail-end of it.

SONYA (pouring). Have a drink.

KHRUSHCHOV. Long life to you. (Drinks)

SONYA. Are you angry with us for rousting you out at night?

KHRUSHCHOV. On the contrary. If you hadn’t, I would be asleep now, and seeing you in the flesh is far more pleasant than dreaming about you.

SONYA. Then how come you look so angry?

KHRUSHCHOV. Because I am angry. There’s nobody around, so a man can speak frankly. How pleased I’d be, Sofya Aleksandrovna, to take you away from here this minute. I cannot breathe this air of yours, and I think that it’s poisoning you. Your father, all wrapped up in his gout and his books and reluctant to recognize anything else, that Uncle Georges with his biliousness, lastly your stepmother . . .

SONYA. What about my stepmother?

KHRUSHCHOV. There are no words to express it . . . there simply aren’t! My lovely girl, there’s a lot I don’t understand about people. Everything about a human being ought to be beautiful: face, dress, soul, ideas . . . Often I’ll see a beautiful face and a dress to match that make my head swim with ecstasy, but the soul and the ideas—good God! A handsome exterior may sometimes conceal a soul so black that no bleach can whiten it . . . Forgive me, I’m getting carried away . . . You really are infinitely dear to me . . .

SONYA (drops a knife). I dropped it . . .

KHRUSHCHOV (picks it up). Never mind . . .

Pause.

Sometimes, when you walk through a forest on a dark night, if all the time in the distance there’s a glimmer of light, you don’t mind the fatigue or the dark or the prickly branches hitting you in the face. I work from morn to darkest night, winter and summer, knowing no rest, I contend with people who don’t understand me, at times I suffer unbearably . . . but I’ve finally found my glimmer of light. I won’t boast that I love you more than anything else in the world. Love for me is not the be-all and end-all in life . . . it is my reward! My good one, my glorious one, there is no higher reward for someone who works, struggles, suffers . . .

SONYA (excited). Sorry . . . Just one question, Mikhail Lvovich.

KHRUSHCHOV. What? Ask it quickly . . .

SONYA. Don’t you see . . . you often drop in on us, and sometimes I drop in on you with my folks. Admit that that makes you feel guilty . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. For what?

SONYA. What I mean is, your democratic feelings are offended by the fact that we’re your close acquaintances. I went to a private girls’ school. Yelena Andreevna is an aristocrat, we dress fashionably, and you’re a democrat . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. So that’s it . . . that’s it . . . let’s not talk about it! Now is not the time!

SONYA. What matters is that you dig peat with your own hands, you plant trees . . . it’s rather peculiar. In other words, you’re a populist . . .²⁶

KHRUSHCHOV. A democrat, a populist . . . Sofya Aleksandrovna, can you say that seriously and even with a quaver in your voice?

SONYA. Yes, yes, seriously, a thousand times seriously.

KHRUSHCHOV. No, no, no . . .

SONYA. I assure you and swear by whatever you like that if I had, say, a sister and you fell in love with her and proposed to her, you would never forgive yourself for it, and you’d be ashamed to look in the faces of your district doctors and female physicians, ashamed that you had fallen in love with a boarding school miss, a prim and proper young lady who never majored in anything and dresses in the latest fashions. I know this perfectly well . . . I see in your eyes that it’s true! In a word, to cut a long story short, these forests of yours, the peat, the embroidered peasant blouses—they’re all a pose, an affectation, a lie and nothing more.

KHRUSHCHOV. What’s this for? My child, why are you insulting me? Anyhow, I am an imbecile. It serves me right: don’t stick your nose in where it’s not wanted! Good-bye! (Goes to the door.)

SONYA. Good-bye . . . I was harsh, please forgive me.

KHRUSHCHOV (returning). If you only knew how oppressive and stifling it is here! An environment in which everyone sidles up to a man, peers at him out of the corner of their eye and pigeonholes as him as a populist, a psychopath, a windbag—anything at all other than a human being! “Oh, that one,” they’ll say, “he’s a psychopath!” — and be delighted. “That one’s a windbag!”—and they’re as pleased as if they’d discovered America! And when they don’t understand me and don’t know what label to stick on my brow, they say, “He’s peculiar, really peculiar!” You’re not yet twenty, but already you’re old and no-nonsense like your father and Uncle Georges, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you invited me over to treat your gout. That’s no way to live! Whoever I am, look me straight in the eye and identify me first as a human being, otherwise you’ll never be at peace in your dealings with people. Good-bye! And mark my words, with those shrewd, suspicious eyes of yours, you’ll never fall in love!

SONYA. That isn’t true!

KHRUSHCHOV. It is!

SONYA. It isn’t true! Just to spite you . . . I am in love! I am in love, and it pains me, pains me! Leave me alone! Go away, I entreat you . . . don’t visit our house . . . don’t visit us . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. I am honored to take my leave! (Exits.)

SONYA (alone). He flew into a rage . . . God forbid I ever have a temper like that man’s!

Pause.

He speaks beautifully, but how can I be sure that it isn’t just hot air? He’s constantly thinking and talking about his forests, he plants trees . . . That’s all very well, but it could be that it’s a psychosis . . . (Covers her face with her hands.) I don’t understand a thing! (Weeps.) He studied medicine, but he doesn’t spend any time practicing medicine . . . It’s all so peculiar, peculiar . . . Lord, help me to figure this out!

Enter YELENA ANDREEVNA.

X

SONYA and YELENA ANDREEVNA.

YELENA ANDREEVNA (opens a window). The storm has passed! What lovely air!

Pause.

Where’s the Wood Goblin?

SONYA. Gone.

Pause.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Sophie!

SONYA. What?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Are you going to go on sulking at me? We haven’t done one another any harm. Why do we have to be enemies? Enough is enough . . .

SONYA. I wanted to myself . . . (Embraces her.) My dear!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Splendid . . .

Both are agitated.

SONYA. Is Papa in bed?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. No, he’s sitting in the parlor . . . We don’t talk to one another for months on end and God knows why . . . (Notices the table.) What’s this?

SONYA. The Wood Goblin had some supper.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. And there’s some wine . . . Let’s pledge one another as sisters.²⁷

SONYA. Let’s.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Out of the same glass . . . (Pours.) That’s better. Well, here goes—friends?

SONYA. Friends.²⁸

They drink and kiss.

For a long time now I’ve wanted to make it up, but somehow I was embarrassed . . . (Weeps.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA. What are you crying for?

SONYA. No reason, it’s the way I am.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Well, never mind, never mind . . . (Weeps.) You little crackpot, now you’ve got me crying!

Pause.

You’re angry with me because you think I married your father for ulterior motives . . . If you’ll believe an oath, I’ll swear to you, I married him for love. I was attracted to him as a scholar and a celebrity. The love was unreal, artificial, but at the time I thought it was real. It’s not my fault. But from the day we got married you’ve gone on punishing me with your shrewd, suspicious eyes.

SONYA. Well, truce, truce! We’ll forget. That’s the second time today I’ve heard that I’ve got shrewd, suspicious eyes.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. You mustn’t look at people that way. It doesn’t suit you. You must trust everyone, otherwise life becomes unliveable.

SONYA. The burnt child fears the fire. I’ve been disappointed so many times.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. By whom? Your father is a good, honorable man, a hard worker. Today you scolded him for being lucky. If he really has been lucky, his involvement in his work would prevent him from noticing how lucky he is. I have done no intentional wrong to your father or you. Your uncle Georges is a very kind, honorable, but unhappy, discontented man . . . Then who is it you don’t trust?

SONYA. Tell me truthfully, friend to friend . . . Are you happy?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. No.

SONYA. One more question. Tell me frankly, would you like to have a young husband?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. What a little girl you are still . . . Of course I would! (Laughs.) Go on, ask me something else, ask me . . .

SONYA. Do you like the Wood Goblin?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Yes, very much.

SONYA (laughs). I must look funny . . . don’t I? Now he’s gone, but I keep hearing his voice and footsteps, and I look out the dark window—and his face appears to me. Let me say what’s on my mind . . . But I can’t say it out loud, I’m embarrassed. Let’s go to my room, we’ll talk there. Do you think I’m being silly? Admit it . . . Is he a good man?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Very, very.

SONYA. It all seems so peculiar, his forests, the peat . . . I don’t understand.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Are forests really the point? Darling, what you have to understand is, he’s got talent!²⁹ Do you know the meaning of talent? Daring, an uncluttered mind, breadth of vision . . . he plants a tree or digs a ton of peat—and already he’s planning ahead, what the result will be in a thousand years, he’s already imagining the happiness of mankind. People like that are rare, and one must love them. God bless you. You’re both pure, daring, honest . . . He’s a bit unbalanced, you’re sensible, intelligent . . . You’ll complement one another wonderfully . . . (Gets up.) But mine is a dreary walk-on part . . . In the field of music and in my husband’s house, in any of life’s dramas—no matter where, in short, I’ve only had a walk-on part. Personally speaking, Sonya, when you think about it, I’m probably very, very unhappy! (Walks nervously around the stage.) No happiness for me in this world. No! Why are you laughing?

SONYA (laughs, covering her face). I’m so happy! How happy I am!

YELENA ANDREEVNA (wringing her hands). As a matter of fact, how unhappy I am!

SONYA. I’m happy . . . happy.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I’d like to play the piano . . . I want to play something right now . . .

SONYA. Do play. (Embraces her.) I can’t sleep . . . Play.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Presently. Your father isn’t asleep. When he’s ill, music irritates him. Go and ask. If he doesn’t object, I’ll play . . . go on . . .

SONYA. Right this minute. (Exits.)

In the garden the WATCHMAN is tapping.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. It’s been a long time since I played. I’ll play and weep, weep like a fool . . . (Out the window.) Is that you tapping, Yefim?

Voice of the WATCHMAN: Uh-huh!

Don’t tap, the master’s not well.

Voice of the WATCHMAN: “I’ll go right now! (Whistles under his breath.) Blacky! Laddy! Blacky!”³⁰

Pause.

SONYA (returning). The answer’s no!

Curtain

ACT THREE

The drawing-room in Serebryakov’s house. Three doors: right, left and center. Daytime. We can hear Yelena Andreevna offstage playing on the piano Lensky’s aria preceding the duel in

Yevgeny Onegin.³¹

I

ORLOVSKY, VOINITSKY, and FYODOR IVANOVICH (the last in Circassian costume with a fur shako in his hand).

VOINITSKY (listening to the music). That’s Yelena Andreevna playing . . . My favorite piece . . .

The offstage music fades away.

Yes . . . a fine piece . . . I don’t think it’s ever been so boring around here as it is now . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH. You have no idea what real boredom is, my boy. When I was a volunteer in Serbia, that’s what I call boredom! Hot, muggy, dirty, head splitting with a hangover . . . Captain Kashkinazi was with me . . . Ran out of conversation ages ago, nowhere to go, nothing to do, don’t feel like drinking—sickening, get me, you simply want to stick your head in a noose! We sit, like vipers, glaring at one another . . . He glares at me, and I glare at him . . . I glare at him, and he glares at me . . . We glare at one another and don’t know why . . . Another hour, get me, goes by, and we go on glaring. Suddenly out of the blue he jumps up, grabs his saber and goes for me . . . What d’ye think of that! . . . Of course, I immediately—he’s about to kill me! — draw my saber, and we go at it hot and heavy: chik-chak, chik-chak, chik-chak . . . They had a hard time pulling us apart. I was all right afterward, but Captain Kashkinazi goes around with a scar on his cheek to this very day. That how fed up to the gills people can get sometimes . . .

ORLOVSKY. Yes, it happens.

Enter SONYA.

II

The same and SONYA.

SONYA (aside). I don’t know what to do with myself . . . (Walks and laughs.)

ORLOVSKY. Pussycat, where are you off to? Sit with us.

SONYA. Fedya, come over here . . . (She leads Fyodor Ivanovich aside.) Come over here . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH. What’s got into you? Why is do you look so radiant?

SONYA. Fedya, give me your word you’ll do what I ask!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Well?

SONYA. Ride over . . . to the Wood Goblin.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. What for?

SONYA. No reason . . . just ride over . . . Ask him how come he hasn’t been here for so long . . . Two weeks now.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. She’s blushing! For shame! Gentlemen, Sonya is in love!

EVERYONE. For shame! For shame!

SONYA covers her face and runs away.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. She slinks around from room to room like a shadow and doesn’t know what to do with herself. She’s in love with the Wood Goblin.

ORLOVSKY. A splendid little girl . . . I love her. I had hoped, Fedyusha, that you would marry her—you couldn’t find a better bride, oh well, I suppose it’s God’s will . . . But how nice and pleasant it would have been for me! I’d drive over to your place, and you’d have a young wife, a hearth and home, the little samovar would be boiling away . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH. That’s not my cup of tea. If I ever did have a bee in my bonnet about getting married, I’d probably marry Yulya. She’s small, at least, and you should always pick the lesser of two evils. And she’s a good housekeeper too . . . (Slaps his forehead.) I’ve got an idea!

ORLOVSKY. What’s the matter?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Let’s have some champagne!

VOINITSKY. It’s too early, besides it’s hot . . . Wait a while . . .

ORLOVSKY (admiring). My sonny boy, my beauty . . . He wants champagne, the dear boy!

Enter YELENA ANDREEVNA.

III

The same and YELENA ANDREEVNA.

YELENA ANDREEVNA walks across the stage.

VOINITSKY. Wonder at her: she can’t walk, without tottering from sheer indolence. Very charming! Very!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Stop it, Georges. It’s boring enough without your buzzing around.

VOINITSKY (blocking her path). A talent, an artist! Well, do you look like an artist? An apathetic, Oblomov-like³² sluggard . . . So very virtuous that, forgive me, it makes me sick to look at you.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Then don’t look . . . Leave me alone . . .

VOINITSKY. Why are you mooning about? (Vigorously.) Come, my dear, show how clever you are! The blood of water nymphs courses through your veins, be a water nymph!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Give over!

VOINITSKY. Satisfy your desires at least once in your life, fall in love as fast as you can, head over heels, with some water sprite . . .³³

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Plop! take a nosedive into a whirlpool, so that Herr Professor and the rest of us throw up our hands in amazement!

VOINITSKY. A water nymph, eh? Love while the loving is good!³⁴

YELENA ANDREEVNA. And what do you know about it? As if I weren’t aware without your help how I should live, if I had my way! I would fly like an uncaged bird away from you all, from your drowsy expressions, boring, idle chatter, forget that you even exist, and then no one would dare teach me lessons. But I have no will of my own. I’m a coward, inhibited, and I go on thinking that if I were unfaithful, all wives would take an example from me and leave their husbands, God would punish me and my conscience would torment me, otherwise I’d show you what a free life is all about! (Exits.)

ORLOVSKY. A darling, a beauty . . .

VOINITSKY. I think I’m about to despise that woman! Inhibited as a young virgin, but philosophizes like an old deacon, a paragon of virtue! Sour grapes! Curdled cream!

ORLOVSKY. That’ll do, that’ll do . . . Where’s the professor now?

VOINITSKY. In his study. Writing.

ORLOVSKY. He sent me a letter to come here on some business natter. Do you know what the business is?

VOINITSKY. He has no business. He writes drivel, moans and groans and oozes envy, that’s all.

ZHELTUKHIN and YULYA enter from the door at right.

IV

The same, ZHELTUKHIN, and YULYA.

ZHELTUKHIN. Good afternoon, gentlemen! (Exchanges greetings.)

YULYA. Good afternoon, godfather dear! (Exchanges kisses.) Good afternoon, Fedenka. (Exchanges kisses.) Good afternoon, Yegor Petrovich! (Exchanges kisses.)

ZHELTUKHIN. Is Aleksandr Vladimirovich in?

ORLOVSKY. He is. He’s in his study.

ZHELTUKHIN. I have to see him. He wrote me about some business deal . . . (Exits.)

YULYA. Yegor Petrovich, did you get the buckwheat yesterday you sent that note about?

VOINITSKY. Thank you, I did. How much do we owe you? We had a delivery of something else from you last spring, I don’t remember what . . . We’ll have to settle up. I can’t stand disorderly accounts and postponed payments.

YULYA. Last spring we delivered sixty-four bushels of rye, Yegor Petrovich, two heifers, a bull-calf, and your farmhands sent for some butter.

VOINITSKY. How much do we owe you?

YULYA. How can I tell you? I can’t say without an abacus.

VOINITSKY. I’ll get an abacus right away, if that’s what you need . . . (Exits and immediately returns with an abacus.)

ORLOVSKY. Sweetie-pie, how’s your brother-man?

YULYA. Fine, thank God. Godfather dear, where did you buy that necktie?

ORLOVSKY. In town, at Kirpichyov’s.

YULYA. It’s handsome. I’ll have to buy Lyonechka one just like it.

VOINITSKY. Here’s the abacus you wanted.

YULYA sits down and clicks the beads on the abacus.

ORLOVSKY. What a housekeeper God bestowed on Lyonya! A mere dot of a thing, invisible to the naked eye, but look how she works! Just look!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Yes, while he just walks around pressing his cheek. The loafer . . .

ORLOVSKY. My cape-ricious darling . . . You know, she really does wear a cape. Last Friday I was walking around the bazaar, and she was over near the wagons in a cape . . .

YULYA. You’ve mixed me all up.

VOINITSKY. Let’s go somewhere else, gentlemen. The reception room or somewhere. I’m sick and tired of this place . . . (Yawns.)

ORLOVSKY. The reception room it is . . . I couldn’t care less.

They go out through the door at left.

YULYA (alone, after a pause). Fedya dressed up like a Chechen³⁵. . . That’s what happens when parents don’t raise them properly . . . There’s no better-looking man in all the district, intelligent, rich, and good for absolutely nothing . . . A perfect fool . . . (Clicks beads on the abacus.)

Enter SONYA.

V

YULYA and SONYA.

SONYA. You’re here, Yulechka? I didn’t know . . .

YULYA (exchanges kisses). My dear!

SONYA. What are you doing here? Accounts? What a good housekeeper you are, it even makes me jealous . . . Yulechka, why aren’t you married?

YULYA. Well . . . They sent a matchmaker to me, but I turned them down. They can’t match me up with a decent suitor! (Sighs.) No!

SONYA. Why not?

YULYA. I’m an uneducated girl. I was just in my second year in high school, when they took me out!

SONYA. Why did they take you out, Yulechka?

YULYA. For incompetence.

SONYA laughs.

Why are you laughing, Sonechka?

SONYA. Something odd is going through my mind . . . Yulechka, I’m so happy today, so happy, that this happiness is beginning to bore me . . . I don’t know what to do with myself . . . Well, let’s talk about something else, let’s . . . Were you ever in love?

YULYA nods her head Yes.

Really? Is he interesting?

YULYA whispers in her ear.

Who? Fyodor Ivanych?

YULYA (nods her head yes). What about you?

SONYA. I am too . . . only not with Fyodor Ivanych. (Laughs.) Well, tell me more.

YULYA. For a long time now I’ve needed to talk to you, Sonechka.

SONYA. Please do.

YULYA. I want to explain something. You see . . . I’ve always felt a spiritual bond with you . . . I’m friends with lots of girls, but you’re the best of them all . . . If you were to say, “Yulechka, give me ten horses or, say, two hundred sheep,” I’d do it with pleasure . . . I would refuse you nothing . . .

SONYA. What’s making you embarrassed, Yulechka?

YULYA. I’m ashamed . . . I . . . I feel a spiritual bond with you . . . you’re the best of them all . . . not proud . . . What a pretty little cotton print you’re got on!

SONYA. We’ll talk about the print later . . . Go on . . .

YULYA (getting excited). I don’t know the clever way to put this . . . May I suggest that you . . . make me happy . . . I mean . . . I mean . . . I mean . . . by marrying Lyonechka. (Hides her face.)

SONYA (getting up). Let’s not talk about it, Yulechka . . . We mustn’t, we mustn’t . . .

Enter YELENA ANDREEVNA.

VI

The same and YELENA ANDREEVNA.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. There’s absolutely nowhere to go to. Both Orlovskys and Georges are strolling around the house, and wherever you go, they’re always there. It’s getting to be simply tiresome. What do they want? They should take a drive somewhere.

YULYA (through tears). Good afternoon, Yelena Andreevna! (Wants to exchange kisses.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Good afternoon, Yulechka. Excuse me, I’m not very fond of kissing. Sonya, what is your father doing?

Pause.

Sonya, why don’t you answer me? I asked you: what is your father doing?

Pause.

Sonya, how come you won’t answer me?

SONYA. You want to know? Come over here please . . . (Leads her somewhat aside.) If you like, I’ll tell you . . . My heart feels too pure today for me to speak to you while I go on concealing things. Here, take this! (Hands her a letter. ) I found this in the garden. Yulechka, let’s go! (Exits with YULYA out the door at left. )

VII

YELENA ANDREEVNA, then FYODOR IVANOVICH.

YELENA ANDREEVNA (alone). What is this? A letter from Georges to me! Why is that my fault? Oh, how cruel, how brazen . . . Her heart is so pure that she cannot talk to me . . . My God, what an insult . . . My head is spinning, I’m going to faint . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH (enters through the door at left and walks across the stage). Why do you always act startled whenever you see me?

Pause.

Hm . . . (Takes the letter from her hands and tears it to shreds.) Forget about it. You must think only of me.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. What’s the meaning of this?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. The meaning is that once I’ve made up my mind about a woman, she won’t get out of my clutches.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. No, the meaning is that you’re idiotic and impertinent.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. At seven-thirty this evening you must be at the bottom of the garden by the little bridge, waiting for me . . . Well, ma’am? That’s all I have to say to you . . . And so, angel mine, until seven-thirty. (Wants to take her by the hand.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA slaps his face.

Forcefully expressed . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Get out of here!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. At your service, ma’am . . . (Goes and returns.) I am touched . . . Let us reason together calmly. You see . . . I’ve experienced everything in this world, I’ve even eaten goldfish soup a couple of times . . . But I haven’t yet gone up in a balloon or even once run off with the wives of learned professors . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Get out . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH. I’ll go in a minute . . . I’ve experienced everything . . . And that’s made me so impertinent, that I simply don’t know what to do with myself. I mean I’m telling you all of this so that if you ever need a friend or a faithful dog, then call on me . . . I’m touched . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I don’t need any dogs . . . Get out.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. At your service . . . (Deeply moved.) Nevertheless, and all the same, I’m touched . . . I am definitely touched . . . Yes . . . (Hesitantly exits.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA (alone). My head is splitting . . . Every night I have bad dreams and a premonition of something horrible . . . Yet how despicable this is! These young people were born and raised together, they’re on a first-name basis with each another, they’re always kissing: they should live in peace and harmony, but they look as if they’re about to sink their teeth into one another . . . The Wood Goblin is saving the forests, but who is there to save the people? (Goes to the door at left, but, on seeing ZHELTUKHIN and YULYA coming to meet her, exits through the central door.)

VIII

ZHELTUKHIN and YULYA.

YULYA. How unlucky we are, Lyonechka, ah, how unlucky!

ZHELTUKHIN. Who gave you permission to talk to her about me? A freelance matchmaker, you unspeakable female! You’ve spoiled it all for me! She’ll think that I don’t know how to speak for myself, and . . . and it’s so lower-class! I’ve said a thousand times that we should leave it alone. Nothing but humiliation and all this innuendo, bad behavior, vulgarity . . . The old man has probably figured out that I’m in love with her, and is already taking advantage of my feelings! He wants me to buy this estate from him.

YULYA. How much is he asking?

ZHELTUKHIN. Ssh! . . . Someone’s coming . . .

Enter from the door at left SEREBRYAKOV, ORLOVSKY, and MARIYA VASILYEVNA, who is reading a pamphlet along the way.

IX

The same, SEREBRYAKOV, ORLOVSKY, and MAYA VASILYEVNA.

ORLOVSKY. I’m not in the best of health either, my dear boy. Why, for two days now my head’s been aching and my whole body tingles . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. Where are the others? I do not like this house. Just like a labyrinth. Twenty-six enormous rooms, everyone scatters, and you can never find anyone. (Rings.) Request Yegor Petrovich and Yelena Andreevna to come here!

ZHELTUKHIN. Yulya, you’ve got nothing to do, go and find Yegor Petrovich and Yelena Andreevna.

YULYA exits.

SEREBRYAKOV. Ill health one might be reconciled to, if the worse came to the worst, but what I cannot stomach is my state of mind at present. I have the feeling that I’m already dead or have dropped off the earth on to some alien planet.

ORLOVSKY. It depends on how you look at it . . .

MARIYA VASILYEVNA (reading). Give me a pencil . . . Another contradiction! I have to jot it down.

ORLOVSKY. Please take this one, Your Excellency! (Hands her a pencil and kisses her hand.)

Enter VOINITSKY.

X

The same, VOINITSKY, then YELENA ANDREEVNA.

VOINITSKY. You’re asking for me?

SEREBRYAKOV. Yes, Georges.

VOINITSKY. What do you want from me, sir?³⁶

SEREBRYAKOV. Sir? . . . Why are you getting angry?

Pause.

If I’ve offended you in any way, then please forgive me . . .

VOINITSKY. Drop that tone . . . Let’s get down to business . . . What do you want?

Enter YELENA ANDREEVNA.

SEREBRYAKOV. And here’s Lenochka . . . Please take your seats, ladies and gentlemen.

Pause.

I have invited you here, my friends, to inform you that we are about to be visited by an Inspector General.³⁷ However, joking aside. The matter is a serious one. Ladies and gentlemen, I have convened you in order to solicit your aid and advice and, knowing your customary civility, I trust to receive them. I am a man of learning, a bookworm, and have ever been a stranger to practical life. I cannot do without the counsel of informed individuals, and so I ask you, Ivan Ivanych, and you, Leonid Stepanych, and you, Georges . . . What it comes down to is manet omnes una nox,³⁸ that is, we are all mortal in the sight of God; I am old, ill and therefore deem it appropriate to regulate my material concerns insofar as they relate to my family. My life is over now, it’s not myself I’m thinking of, but I have a young wife, an unmarried daughter . . . To go on living in the country I find impossible.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. It’s all the same to me.

SEREBRYAKOV. We were not made for country life. To live in town on those funds which we earn from this estate is equally impossible. The day before yesterday I sold the forest for four thousand rubles, but that is an extraordinary measure which could not be taken advantage of annually. We must seek out measures which will guarantee us a regular, more or less fixed amount of income. I have thought of one such measure and I have the honor to submit it for your discussion. Leaving aside the details, I set it forth in its general outlines. Our estate yields on average no more than two percent. I propose to sell it. If we turn the money thus acquired into interest-bearing securities, we shall receive from four to five percent. I think there may even be a surplus of a few thousand, which will enable us to buy a small cottage in Finland . . .³⁹

VOINITSKY. Hold on, my ears seem to be deceiving me. Repeat what you just said . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. Turn the money into interest-bearing securities and with the surplus left over buy a cottage in Finland . . .

VOINITSKY. Not Finland . . . You said something else.

SEREBRYAKOV. I propose to sell the estate.

VOINITSKY. There, that’s it . . . You’ll sell the estate . . . Splendid, good thinking . . . And where do you propose I go with my old mother?

SEREBRYAKOV. All that will be discussed in due time . . . Not everything at once . . .

VOINITSKY. Hold on . . . Obviously, up to now I didn’t have a grain of common sense. Up to now I was stupid enough to think that this estate belongs to Sonya. My late father bought this estate as a dowry for my sister. Up to now I was naive, I didn’t interpret the laws like a heathen, and I thought the estate passed from my sister to Sonya.

SEREBRYAKOV. Yes, the estate belongs to Sonya. Who disputes it? Without Sonya’s consent I will not resolve to sell it. Besides, I’m proposing to do this on Sonya’s behalf.

VOINITSKY. This is incomprehensible, incomprehensible! Either I’ve gone out of my mind, or . . . or . . .

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. Georges, don’t contradict the Professor. He knows better than we what is right and what is wrong.

VOINITSKY. No, give me some water . . . (Drinks water.) Say what it is you want! What do you want!

SEREBRYAKOV. I don’t understand why you’re getting so worked up, Georges? I don’t say my project is ideal. If everyone finds it infeasible, I shall not insist.

Enter DYADIN; he is wearing a tailcoat, white gloves, and a wide-brimmed top hat.

XI

The same and DYADIN.

DYADIN. I have the honor to wish you good day. I beg your pardon for daring to intrude without being announced. Sorry, but I crave your indulgence, because there wasn’t a single domestic in your front hall.

SEREBRYAKOV (at a loss). Delighted . . . Do please . . .

DYADIN (bowing and scraping). Your Excellency! Mesdames! My intrusion on your premises has a dual purpose. Firstly, I’ve come here to pay a visit and pay my reverential respects, secondly, to invite you all, if the weather permits, to make an excursion to my domain. I reside in the watermill, which I rent from our mutual friend the Wood Goblin. It is a secluded, poetical corner of the earth, where by night you can hear the water nymphs splashing, and by day . . .

VOINITSKY. Hold on, Waffles, we’re talking business . . . Wait, later . . . (To Serebryakov.) You go ahead and ask him. This estate was bought from his uncle.

SEREBRYAKOV. Ah, why should I ask him? What for?

VOINITSKY. This estate was bought at that time for ninety-five thousand! Father paid only seventy down, so there was a mortgage of twenty-five thousand left. Now listen . . . This estate would not be free and clear if I hadn’t relinquished an inheritance in favor of my sister, whom I loved devoutly. Moreover, for ten years I worked like an ox and paid off the whole debt.

ORLOVSKY. What do you want then, my dear boy?

VOINITSKY. The estate is clear of debt and not in a mess thanks only to my personal efforts. And now, when I’m growing old, they want to throw me out of here on my ear!

SEREBRYAKOV. I can’t understand what you’re driving at!

VOINITSKY. For twenty-five years I ran this estate, worked hard, sent you money like the most conscientious bookkeeper, and in all that time not once did you thank me! The whole time, both in my youth and now, you paid me a salary of five hundred rubles a year—a pittance! — and not once did you have the decency to raise it by even one ruble!

SEREBRYAKOV. Georges, how was I to know! I’m not a man of business and I have no head for such things. You could have raised it yourself as much as you liked!

VOINITSKY. Why didn’t I steal? Why don’t you all despise me because I didn’t steal? That would have been the thing to do! and now I wouldn’t be a pauper!

MARIYA VASILYEVNA (sternly). Georges!

DYADIN (getting upset). Zhorzhenka, you mustn’t, you mustn’t . . . I’m all a-tremble . . . Why spoil good relations? (Kisses him.) You mustn’t . . .

VOINITSKY. For twenty-five years I and my mother here, like moles, sat between these four walls . . . All our thoughts and feelings concerned no one but you. Days we talked about you, about your work, took pride in you, uttered your name with reverence; nights we wasted reading periodicals and books, which I now deeply despise!

DYADIN. You mustn’t. Zhorzhenka, you mustn’t . . . I can’t take it . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. I don’t understand, what do you want?

VOINITSKY. To us you were a creature of a higher order, and we learned your articles by heart . . . But now my eyes have been opened! I see it all! You write about art, but not one thing do you understand about art! All your work, which I loved, isn’t worth a tinker’s dam!

SEREBRYAKOV. My friends! Try and calm him down, once and for all! I’m going!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Georges, I insist that you keep quiet! You hear me?

VOINITSKY. I won’t keep quiet! (Blocking Serebryakov’s path.) Stop, I haven’t finished! You ruined my life! I haven’t lived, I haven’t lived! Thanks to your charity I blighted, destroyed the best years of my life! You are my deadliest enemy!

DYADIN. I can’t take it . . . can’t take it . . . I’m going to another room. (Exits in extreme consternation into the room at right.)

SEREBRYAKOV. What do you want from me? And what right do you have to take such a tone with me? A nobody! If the estate is yours, then take it, I have no use for it!

ZHELTUKHIN (aside). Well, now they’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest! I’m going! (Exits.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA. If you don’t keep quiet, I’m leaving this hellhole this very minute! (Screams.) I can’t take any more of this!

VOINITSKY. My life is wasted! I’m talented, intelligent, daring . . . If I had had a normal life, I might have evolved into a Schopenhauer, a Dostoievsky⁴⁰ . . . My tongue’s running away with me! I’m losing my mind . . . Mommy, I’m desperate! Mommy!

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. Do as the Professor says!

VOINITSKY. Mommy! What am I to do? Don’t, don’t say anything! I know what I have to do! (To Serebryakov.) You’re going to remember me! (Exits through the center door.)

MARIYA VASILYEVNA goes after him.

SEREBRYAKOV. Ladies and gentlemen, what is all this, I mean really? Get that madman away from me!

ORLOVSKY. Never mind, never mind, Sasha, let his temper cool down a bit. Don’t get so excited.

SEREBRYAKOV. I cannot live under the same roof with him! He lives right there (indicates the center door), practically on top of me . . . Move him into the village, to the servant’s quarters, or I’ll move, but to stay in the same house with him is out of the question . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA (to her husband). If there is a repeat of anything like this, I shall leave!

SEREBRYAKOV. Oh, please, don’t try and scare me!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I’m not trying to scare you, but you have all apparently conspired to make my life a living hell . . . I’m going . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. Everyone knows perfectly well that you are young, I am old, and that you’re doing me a great favor living here . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Keep going, keep going . . .

ORLOVSKY. There, there, there . . . My friends . . .

KHRUSHCHOV enters hurriedly.

XII

The same and KHRUSHCHOV.

KHRUSHCHOV (agitated). I’m delighted to find you at home, Aleksandr Vladimirovich . . . Forgive me, I may have come at a bad time and am disturbing you . . . But that’s not the point. Good afternoon . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. What can I do for you?

KHRUSHCHOV. Excuse me, I’m overexcited — it’s because I just rode over here so quickly . . . Aleksandr Vladimirovich, I heard that the day before yesterday you sold your forest to Kuznetsov for timber. If that’s true, and not mere gossip, then I beg you not to do it.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Mikhail Lvovich, my husband is not disposed to talk business at the moment. Let’s go into the garden.

KHRUSHCHOV. But I have talk to him right now!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. You know best . . . I’ve done all I can . . . (Exits.)

KHRUSHCHOV. Let me ride over to Kuznetsov and tell him that you’ve reconsidered . . . All right? May I? To fell a thousand trees, to destroy them for the sake of a few thousand, for pay for women’s fripperies, caprices, luxuries . . . To destroy so that future generations will curse our barbarity! If you, a learned, famous man, make up your mind to such cruelty, what are other people, far inferior to you, to do? This is really horrible!

ORLOVSKY. Misha, put it off to later!

SEREBRYAKOV. Let’s go, Ivan Ivanovich, there’ll be no end to this.

KHRUSHCHOV (blocks Serebryakov’s path). In that case, tell you what, Professor . . . Wait, in three months I’ll put the money together and buy it from you myself.

ORLOVSKY. Excuse me, Misha, but this is rather peculiar . . . Well, you are, let’s say, a man of ideals . . . we humbly thank you for that, we bow down to you (bows), but why make such a fuss!⁴¹

KHRUSHCHOV (flaring up). Everybody’s darling godfather! There are a lot of good-natured people on this earth, and that always struck me as suspicious! They’re good-natured because they couldn’t care less!

ORLOVSKY. So you’ve come here to quarrel, my dear boy . . . That’s not nice! An ideal is an ideal, but, lad, you’ve got to have something else as well . . . (Points to his heart.) Without this, my dear boy, all your forests and peat aren’t worth a tinker’s dam . . . Don’t be offended, but you’re still green, oof, are you ever green!

SEREBRYAKOV (sharply). And next time be so good as not to come in unannounced, and please spare me your psychotic stunts! You all wanted to try my patience, and you succeeded . . . Please leave me alone! All these forests of yours, the peat I consider to be delirium and psychosis—there, that’s my opinion! Let’s go, Ivan Ivanovich! (He exits.)

ORLOVSKY (following him). That’s going too far, Sasha . . . Why be so cutting? (Exits.)

KHRUSHCHOV (alone, after a pause). Delirium, psychosis . . . Which means, in the opinion of a famous scholar and professor, I’m insane . . . I submit to Your Excellency’s authority and shall now go home and shave my head. No, the earth which still supports you is insane!

He goes quickly to the door at right; enter from the door at left SONYA, who had been eavesdropping in the doorway throughout all of Scene XII.

XIII

KHRUSHCHOV and SONYA.

SONYA (runs after him). Wait . . . I heard it all . . . Go on talking . . . Say something right away or else I won’t be able to keep it in and I’ll start talking!

KHRUSHCHOV. Sofya Aleksandrovna, I have already had my say. I pleaded with your father to spare the forest, I was in the right, but he insulted me, called me insane . . . I am insane!

SONYA. That’s enough, that’s enough . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. Yes, the sane are the ones who disguise themselves as learned men to conceal their hearts of stone and pass off their callousness as profound wisdom! The sane are the ones who marry old men so they can cheat on them in broad daylight, so they can buy themselves stylish, elegant gowns with money made by felling forests!

SONYA. Listen to me, please listen . . . (Seizes his hand.) Let me tell you . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. Let’s stop this. Let’s put an end to it. I mean nothing to you, your opinion of me I know already and there’s nothing left for me to do here. Good-bye. I’m sorry that the only memory I shall retain of our close acquaintance, which I so cherished, is of your father’s gout and your debating points about my democratic tendencies . . . But I’m not the one to blame . . . Not I . . .

SONYA weeps, hides her faces and quickly exits out the door at left.

I was careless enough to fall in love here, let it be a lesson to me! Away from this dungeon!

He heads for the door at right; enter at the left YELENA ANDREEVNA.

XIV

KHRUSHCHOV and YELENA ANDREEVNA.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Are you still here? Wait . . . Just now Ivan Ivanovich told me that my husband was rude to you . . . Forgive him, he is irritable today and did not understand you . . . As for me, my heart is on your side, Mikhail Lvovich! Believe in the sincerity of my respect, I sympathize, I’m moved, and allow me to offer you my friendship out of a pure heart! (Extends her hands.)

KHRUSHCHOV (in disgust). Get away from me . . . I despise your friendship! (Exits.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA (alone, moans). What for? What for?

A shot offstage.

XV

YELENA ANDREEVNA, MARIYA VASILYEVNA, then SONYA, SEREBRYAKOV, ORLOVSKY, and ZHELTUKHIN.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA staggers out the central door, screams, and falls unconscious.

SONYA enters and runs out the central door.

SEREBRYAKOV

What is it?

ORLOVSKY

ZHELTUKHIN

SONYA’s screams are heard; she returns and cries out: “Uncle Georges has shot himself!” She, ORLOVSKY, SEREBRYAKOV, and ZHELTUKHIN run out the central door.

YELENA ANDREEVNA (moans). What for? What for?

DYADIN appears in the doorway at right.

XVI

YELENA ANDREEVNA, MARIYA VASILYEVNA, and DYADIN.

DYADIN (in the doorway). What’s going on?

YELENA ANDREEVNA (to him). Take me away from here! Throw me down a mineshaft, kill me, but I cannot stay here. Quickly, for pity’s sake! (Exits wzth DYADIN.)

Curtain

ACT FOUR

A forest and the house by the mill, which Dyadin rents from Khrushchov.

I

YELENA ANDREEVNA and DYADIN are sitting on a bench beneath a window.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Ilya Ilyich, dovey, tomorrow please drive over to the post office again.

DYADIN. Absolutely.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I shall wait another three days. If my brother hasn’t answered my letter by then, I’ll borrow some money from you and go to Moscow myself. I can’t live with you here at the mill forever.

DYADIN. You’re quite right . . .

Pause.

It’s not my place to teach you, my deeply respected lady, but all your letters, telegrams, which I take to the post office every day—they are all, forgive me, labors lost. Whatever answer your brother may send, sooner or later you have to go back to your husband.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I won’t go back . . . We have to look at it rationally, Ilya Ilyich. I don’t love my husband. The young people I did love were unfair to me from start to finish. Why should I go back there? You’ll say-duty . . . I know that perfectly well, but, I repeat, we have to look at it rationally . . .

Pause.

DYADIN. Quite right, ma’am . . . The greatest of Russian poets, Lomonosov,⁴² ran away from the district of Archangel to seek his fortune in Moscow. Of course, that was noble on his part . . . But why did you run away? After all, your happiness, no matter how rational you may be, is, to put it bluntly, nowhere to be found . . . It is ordained that the canary bird sit in a cage and gaze at the happiness of others, yes, and sit there for all its life long.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. But maybe I’m not a canary, but an uncaged sparrow!

DYADIN. Oho! A bird is identified by its flight pattern, most respected lady . . . These past two weeks any other lady would have had plenty of time to visit a dozen towns and leave everybody in her dust, but you chose to run only as far as the mill, and even here you’ve been eating your heart out . . . No, where’s there to go? You shall live with me for a little while longer, your feelings will simmer down, and you’ll go back to your husband. (Hearkening.) Someone’s driving up in a carriage. (Gets up.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I shall go.

DYADIN. I dare not impose my presence on you any further . . . I’ll go to my room in the mill and have a little nap . . . This morning I got up earlier than Aurora.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. When you wake up, come and we’ll take tea together. (Goes into the house.)

DYADIN (alone). If I lived in a cultural center, they would draw a caricature of me in a magazine with a hilarious satirical caption. Goodness me, at my advanced age and with my unprepossessing appearance, I’ve carried off the young wife of a famous professor! It’s fascinating! (Exits.)

II

SEMYON (carries buckets) and YULYA (enters).

YULYA. Good afternoon, Semyon, God save you! Is Ilya Ilyich at home?

SEMYON. He is. He went to the mill.

YULYA. Go and fetch him.

SEMYON. Right away. (Exits.)

YULYA (alone). He’s sleeping, I suppose . . . (Sits on the little bench beneath the widow and sighs deeply.) Some people sleep, others enjoy themselves, but I spend my days on the go, on the go . . . God won’t let me die. (Sighs even more deeply.) Lord, how can people be as foolish as that Waffles! I was driving past his barn just now, and a little black piglet ran out the door . . . If those pigs start rooting in other people’s grain sacks, he’ll be hearing about it . . .

Enter DYADIN.

III

YULYA and DYADIN.

DYADIN (putting on a frockcoat). Is it you, Yulya Stepanovna? Sorry, I’m in a state of undress . . . I was about to drop into the arms of Morpheus.

YULYA. Good afternoon.

DYADIN. Forgive me for not inviting you inside . . . My house is in a bit of a mess and so on . . . If you like, please come to the mill . . .

YULYA. I’ll just sit here. This is why I’ve dropped in on you, Ilya Ilyich. Lyonechka and the Professor, for some recreation, want to have a picnic here at your mill today, a tea party . . .

DYADIN. Extremely gratified.

YULYA. I came ahead of them . . . They’ll be here soon. Please arrange for a table to be set up, oh, and a samovar, of course . . . Have Senka get the baskets of food out of my carriage.

DYADIN. Can do.

Pause.

What’s it like now? How are things over there?

YULYA. Bad, Ilya Ilyich . . . Believe you me, it’s made me sick with worry. You know, of course, that the Professor and Sonya are living with us now?

DYADIN. I know.

YULYA. After Yegor Petrovich did himself in, they couldn’t live in his house. They’re afraid. By day there’s no problem, but when night falls, they all gather in one room and sit there until dawn. They’re all terrified. They’re afraid that Yegor Petrovich is haunting the dark corners . . .

DYADIN. Superstition . . . And do they mention Yelena Andreevna?

YULYA. Of course, they mention her.

Pause.

She cleared out!

DYADIN. Yes, a subject that deserves treatment by a painter of shipwrecks and tempests . . .⁴³ She up and cleared out.

YULYA. And now nobody knows where . . . Maybe she went away, but maybe, in her desperation . . .

DYADIN. God is merciful, Yuliya Stepanovna! Everything will turn out for the best.

Enter KHRUSHCHOV with a portfolio and a case with drawing implements.

IV

The same and KHRUSHCHOV

KHRUSHCHOV. Hey! Anybody here? Semyon!

DYADIN. Look over here!

KHRUSHCHOV. Ah! . . . Good afternoon, Yulechka!

YULYA. Good afternoon, Mikhail Lvovich.

KHRUSHCHOV. I’ve dropped by your place again, Ilya Ilyich, to get some work done. Sitting at home’s no good. Tell them to set up my table under this tree as they did yesterday, oh and tell them to get two lamps ready. It’s getting dark already . . .

DYADIN. At your service, your honor. (Exits.)

KHRUSHCHOV. How are you getting on, Yulechka?

YULYA. We’re getting on.

KHRUSHCHOV. Hm . . . And what’s your Lyonechka doing?

YULYA. Sits at home . . . Always with Sonechka . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. I’ll bet!

Pause.

He ought to marry her.

YULYA. Is that so? (Sighs.) God grant it! He’s a cultured, well-born man, she’s from a good family too . . . I always wished for it . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. She’s a fool . . .

YULYA. Now, don’t say that.

KHRUSHCHOV. And your Lyonechka is as bright as a button too . . . Generally speaking, your whole crowd is the pick of the litter. The best and the brightest!

YULYA. I suppose you haven’t had dinner today.

KHRUSHCHOV. Why do you think that?

YULYA. You’re so ill tempered.

Enter DYADIN and SEMYON; they are carrying a small table.

V

The same, DYADIN, and SEMYON.

DYADIN. You know a sure thing when you see it. You picked a beautiful spot for your work. It’s an oasis! A genuine oasis! Imagine that you’re surrounded by palm trees, Yulechka is a gentle gazelle, you’re a lion, I’m a tiger.

KHRUSHCHOV. You’re a decent enough fellow, a sensitive soul, Ilya Ilyich, but why do you act this way? These sickly sweet words, the way you shuffle your feet, jerk your shoulders . . . If a stranger caught sight of you, he’d think you’re not a man but some other damned thing! . . . It’s annoying . . .

DYADIN. Which means, it was so ordained at my birth . . . Fatal predestination.

KHRUSHCHOV. There you go again, fatal predestination. Drop all that. (Pinning a diagram to the table.) I’m going to spend the night here.

DYADIN. I am extremely pleased . . . Now you’re angry, Misha, but my heart’s filled with indescribable joy! As if a dicky-bird were sitting in my breast, warbling a little ditty.

KHRUSHCHOV. O be joyful.

Pause.

You’ve got a dicky-bird in your breast, and I’ve got a toad in mine. A million things have gone wrong! Shimansky sold his forest for timber . . . That’s one! Yelena Andreevna ran away from her husband, and now nobody knows where she is. That’s two! I feel with every passing day that I’m becoming more stupid, more picayune, and more untalented . . . That’s three! Yesterday I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t, I didn’t have the courage. You may congratulate me. The late Yegor Petrovich left behind a diary. This diary first got into Ivan Ivanych’s hands, I was with him and I’ve read it over about a dozen times . . .

YULYA. Our folks read it too.

KHRUSHCHOV. Georges’s affair with Yelena Andreevna, which reverberated through the whole district, turns out to be a vulgar, filthy slander . . . I believed that slander and defamed him along with the others, hated, despised, insulted him.

DYADIN. Of course, that was wrong.

KHRUSHCHOV. The first person whom I believed was your brother, Yul-echka! I’m a fine one too! I believed your brother, whom I don’t respect, but I didn’t believe the woman who was sacrificing herself before my very eyes. I was more eager to believe evil than good, I couldn’t see past my own nose. And this means that I am as common as everybody else.

DYADIN (to Yulya). Let’s go to the mill, my girl. Let the bad-tempered fellow work here, while you and I have some fun. Let’s go . . . Get on with your work, Mishenka. (He and YULYA exit.)

KHRUSHCHOV (alone; mixes colors in a saucer). One night I saw him press his face to her hand. In his diary he has described that night in detail, described how I came by there, what I said to him. He’s put down my words and calls me a stupid, narrow-minded fellow.

Pause.

It’s too dark . . . Should be lighter . . . She never loved me . . . I made a blot . . . (Scrapes the paper with a knife.) Even if I admit there may be some truth to it, still it doesn’t do to think about it . . . It began stupidly, it ended stupidly . . .

SEMYON and WORKMEN bring in a big table.

What are you doing? What’s this for?

SEMYON. Ilya Ilyich told us to. Company’s coming from the Zheltukhins’ for tea.

KHRUSHCHOV. Thank you kindly. That means, I’ve got to leave off work . . . I’ll pack up and go home.

Enter ZHELTUKHIN arm in arm with SONYA.

VI

KHRUSHCHOV, ZHELTUKHIN, and SONYA.

ZHELTUKHIN (sings). “Reluctant to this mournful shore an unknown power doth me draw . . .”⁴⁴

KHRUSHCHOV. Who’s that? Ah! (Hastens to pack up his drawing implements in their case. )

ZHELTUKHIN. Just one more question, Sophie dear . . . Do you remember on my birthday you had lunch at our place? You’ve got to admit that that time you burst out laughing at the way I looked.

SONYA. That’s enough of that, Leonid Stepanych. How can you say a thing like that? I burst out laughing at nothing in particular.

ZHELTUKHIN (on seeing Khrushchov). Ah, look who it is! You’re here too? Afternoon.

KHRUSHCHOV. Afternoon.

ZHELTUKHIN. Working? Wonderful . . . Where’s Waffles?

KHRUSHCHOV. Over there . . .

ZHELTUKHIN. Where’s over there?

KHRUSHCHOV. I think I’ve made it clear. Over there, in the mill.

ZHELTUKHIN. I’ll go and get him. ((Walks, singing.) “Reluctant to this mournful shore . . .” (Exits.)

SONYA. Good afternoon . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. Good afternoon.

Pause.

SONYA. What are you drawing?

KHRUSHCHOV. Nothing special . . . it’s of no interest.

SONYA. Is it a chart?

KHRUSHCHOV. No, it’s a diagram of the forests in our district. I’ve mapped them out.

Pause.

The green color indicates the places where there were forests in our grandfathers’ day and earlier; the light green is where forests have been felled in the last twenty-five years, well, and the light blue is where forests are still intact . . . Yes . . .

Pause.

Well, what about you? Happy?

SONYA. Now, Mikhail Lvovich, is not the time to think about happiness.

KHRUSHCHOV. What else is there to think about?

SONYA. Our sorrow came about only because we were thinking too much about our happiness . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. If you say so, ma’am.

Pause.

SONYA. Every cloud has its silver lining. Sorrow has taught me. We have to forget about our own happiness, Mikhail Lvovich, and think only about other people’s happiness. Our whole life has to be made up of sacrifices.

KHRUSHCHOV. Well, yes . . .

Pause.

Marya Vasilyevna had a son who shot himself and she still keeps on looking for contradictions in her silly pamphlets. A disaster struck you, and you play games with your vanity; you try to pervert your life and think you’re making a sacrifice . . . Nobody’s got any heart . . . Neither of us . . . It’s all going wrong, everything’s falling to rack and ruin . . . I shall leave now and not get in the way of you and Zheltukhin . . . What are you crying about? I didn’t mean to do that.

SONYA. Never mind, never mind . . . (Wipes her eyes.)

Enter YULYA, DYADIN, and ZHELTUKHIN.

VII

The same, YULYA, DYADIN, ZHELTUKHIN, then SEREBYAKOV and ORLOVSKY.

SEREBRYAKOV’s voice: “Yoo-hoo! Where are you, my friends?”

SONYA (shouts). Papa, over here!

DYADIN. They’re bringing the samovar! Fascinating! (He and YULYA fuss with things on the table.)

Enter SEREBRYAKOV and ORLOVSKY.

SONYA. Over here, Papa!

SEREBRYAKOV. I see, I see . . .

ZHELTUKHIN (loudly). Gentlemen, I call this session to order! Waffles, uncork the cordial!

KHRUSHCHOV (to Serebryakov). Professor, let’s forget everything that passed between us! (Extends his hand) I beg your pardon . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. Thank you. Most delighted. You should forgive me as well. The day after that episode when I tried to contemplate all that had occurred and recalled our interchange, I felt very uncomfortable . . . Let us be friends. (Takes him by the arm and goes to the table.)

ORLOVSKY. Should have done it a long time ago, my dear boy. A bad peace is better than a good quarrel.

DYADIN. Your Excellency, I’m glad that you have chosen to pay a visit to my oasis. Indescribably delighted!

SEREBRYAKOV. Thank you, my good man. It is beautiful here indeed. A veritable oasis.

ORLOVSKY. So you’re a nature lover, Sasha?

SEREBRYAKOV. Quite so.

Pause.

Let us not be silent, gentlemen, let us speak. In our situation that’s by far the best thing. One must look misfortune in the face boldly and directly. I can look at it more bravely than any of you, and that is because I am more unhappy than any of you.

YULYA. Gentlemen, I don’t provide any sugar; drink it with jam.⁴⁵

DYADIN (bustling around among the guests). I’m so pleased, I’m so pleased!

SEREBRYAKOV. Recently, Mikhail Lvovich, I have experienced so much and done so much thinking that I believe I could write a whole treatise on the art of living. We live and learn all our lives, but it is the misfortunes that instruct us.

DYADIN. Let the dead past bury the dead. God is merciful, all’s well that ends well.

SONYA gives a start.

ZHELTUKHIN. What made you start?

SONYA. Someone was shouting.

DYADIN. It’s the peasants down by the river catching crayfish.

Pause.

ZHELTUKHIN. Gentlemen, after all we did come to an agreement to spend this evening as if nothing had happened . . . Honestly, there’s a kind of tension . . .

DYADIN. Your Excellency, I cherish for learning not just reverence, but even a kindred feeling. My brother Grigory Ilyich’s wife’s brother, maybe you deign to know him, Konstantin Gavrilych Novosyolov,⁴⁶ had a master’s degree in comparative literature.

SEREBRYAKOV. I didn’t know him, but I know of him.

Pause.

YULYA. Yesterday was exactly two weeks since Yegor Petrovich died.

KHRUSHCHOV. Yulechka, let’s not talk about that.

SEREBRYAKOV. Be brave, be brave!

Pause.

ZHELTUKHIN. All the same you can feel a kind of tension . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. Nature abhors a vacuum. She has deprived me of two close friends, and, in order to fill the gap, she has sent me new friends. I drink to your health, Leonid Stepanovich!

ZHELTUKHIN. Thank you, my dear Aleksandr Vladimirovich! In my turn let me drink to your fruitful academic activities.

If wisdom and virtue’s seeds you sow

The Russian people are bound to show

Always their heartfelt thanks!⁴⁷

SEREBRYAKOV. I treasure your compliment. I cordially look forward to the time when our friendly relations will evolve into something more familial.

Enter FYODOR IVANOVICH.

VIII

The same and FYODOR IVANOVICH.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Here’s where it is! A picnic!

ORLOVSKY. My sonny boy . . . my beauty!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Good afternoon. (Exchanges kisses with Sonya and Yulya.)

ORLOVSKY. We’ve haven’t seen you for a whole two weeks. Where were you? What kept you so long?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. I just rode over to Lyonya’s place, where they told me you were here, so I rode over here.

ORLOVSKY. Where have you been hanging out?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. I haven’t slept for three nights . . . Yesterday, father, I lost five thousand at cards. I was drinking and playing cards, and rode back and forth to town five separate times. Went on a bender.

ORLOVSKY. Attaboy! You’re probably a little tipsy now?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Sober as a judge. Yulka, tea! Only with lemon, nice and sour . . . And how do you like that Georges, huh? Out of the blue ups and blows his brains out! And the thing he picked to do it with too: a Lefoché! He couldn’t use a Smith and Wesson!⁴⁸

KHRUSHCHOV. Shut up, you swine!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. A swine, but a purebred one! (Strokes his beard.) The beard alone is worth a pretty penny . . . So I’m a swine and a fool and scum, but I merely have to will it—and a loving bride will drop in my lap. Sonya, marry me! (To Khrushchov.) However, I’m sorry . . . Pardon . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. Stop playing the fool.

YULYA. You’re a lost cause, Fedenka! In the whole district there’s no bigger drunkard and spendthrift than you. It makes me sorry just to look at you. A reprobate sinner — the wrath of God!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Well, now she’s started bellyaching again! Come on, sit next to me . . . That’s it. I’ll come and stay with you for a couple of weeks . . . I need a rest. (Kisses her.)

YULYA. You should be ashamed with people around. You should be a comfort to your father in his old age, but you only disgrace him. A stupid way to live, that’s all there is to it.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. I’ll give up the drink! Basta! (Pours himself a drink.) Is this plum cordial or cherry?

YULYA. Stop drinking, no drinks.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. One little glass is all right. (Drinks.) Wood Goblin, I’ll give you a pair of horses and a rifle. I’m going to live with Yulya . . . I’ll stay with her for a couple of weeks.

KHRUSHCHOV. A stay in a disciplinary battalion would do you more good.

YULYA. Tea, drink tea!

DYADIN. Have some cookies with it, Fedenka.

ORLOVSKY (to Serebryakov). Sasha, old pal, for forty years I led exactly the same kind of life as my Fyodor. Once, dear boy, I started counting up: how many women had I made unhappy in my time? I counted and counted, got as far as seventy and gave it up. Well, sir, as soon as I reached the age of forty, suddenly, Sasha, old pal, something came over me. A desolation, I didn’t know what to do with myself, in short, my spirits sank, and that was that. I did one thing after another, I’d read books, I’d work, I’d travel— nothing helped! Well, sir, my dear boy, I was paying a call on a now deceased neighbor of mine, his Most Serene Highness Prince Dmitry Pavlovich. We had a snack, then we had dinner . . . After dinner, to keep from napping, we arranged for target shooting in the courtyard. Scads and scads of people gathered round. Our Waffles was there too.

DYADIN. I was, I was . . . I remember.

ORLOVSKY. The desolation I was feeling—you understand — good Lord! I couldn’t bear it. Suddenly, tears welled up in my eyes, I started to sway and I began to shout to the whole courtyard, at the top of my lungs:” My friends, good people, forgive me for Christ’s sake!” And at that very minute my heart grew pure, loving, warm, and from that time on, my dear boy, in all the district there’s no happier man than I am. And you should do the same thing.

SEREBRYAKOV. Do what?

A glow appears in the sky.

ORLOVSKY. The same as I did. You have to give in, to capitulate.

SEREBRYAKOV. A little sample of our homegrown philosophy. You advise me to ask for forgiveness. What for? Other people should be asking forgiveness of me!

SONYA. Papa, after all, we’re the ones at fault!

SEREBRYAKOV. Really? Gentlemen, obviously, at the moment you have in mind my relationship with my wife. Do you really believe that I am at fault? This is almost laughable, gentlemen. She shirked her duty, deserted me at a critical moment in my life . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. Aleksandr Vladimirovich, listen to me . . . For twenty-five years you’ve been a professor and served learning, I plant forests and practice medicine, but what’s the point, who’s it all for, if we don’t show mercy to the ones we’re working for? We say that we serve people, and at the same time we are inhumanly destroying each another. For instance, did you or I do anything to save Georges? Where is your wife, whom we all insulted? Where is your peace of mind, where is your daughter’s peace of mind? It’s all wrecked, destroyed, it’s all gone to rack and ruin. Gentlemen, you call me a Wood Goblin, but after all I’m not the only one, there’s a wood goblin lurking in all of you, you are all wandering through a dark wood and groping your way through life. Of intelligence, understanding, and feeling we have only just enough to spoil our own lives and other people’s.

YELENA ANDREEVNA enters from the house and sits on the bench beneath the window.

IX

The same and YELENA ANDREEVNA.

KHRUSHCHOV. I considered myself to be a humane man of ideals and yet I never forgave people the slightest error, believed slanders, gossiped with the rest, and when, for example, your wife trustingly offered me her friendship, I blurted out from the heights of my grandeur: “Get away from me! I despise your friendship!” That’s the sort of man I am. There’s a wood goblin lurking in me, I’m petty, average, blind, but you, Professor, are no great champion either! And meanwhile throughout the district, women take me to be a hero, a man of progress, while you are famous all over Russia. But if people like me are seriously taken to be heroes, and people like you are seriously famous, it means we’re in sore need of real people and anybody can be passed off as a somebody, there are no real heroes, no geniuses, no people who could lead us out of this dark wood, could put to rights the mess we make, no real champions, who might genuinely deserve an honorable fame . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. Excuse me . . . I did not come here to engage in a polemic with you and defend my right to be famous.

ZHELTUKHIN. Generally speaking, Misha, let’s change the subject.

KHRUSHCHOV. I’ll be done in a minute and go away. Yes, I’m petty, but you, Professor, are no champion! Georges was petty, the cleverest thing he could come up with was blowing his brains out. Everyone’s petty! As to the women . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA (interrupting). As to the women, they are no better. (Comes to the table.) Yelena Andreevna left her husband, and do you think she did anything sensible with her freedom? Don’t worry . . . She will come back . . . (Sits down at the table.) And I have come back . . .

General consternation.

DYADIN (roars with laughter). This is fascinating! Gentlemen, don’t blame me, let me put in a word or two! Your Excellency, it is I who abducted your wife just as once a certain Paris did Helen! I did it! Although there are no pockmarked Parises, but, friend Horatio, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy!⁴⁹

KHRUSHCHOV. I don’t understand a thing . . . Is that you, Yelena Andreevna?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I’ve been staying with Ilya Ilyich the last two weeks . . . Why are you all looking at me like that? Well, good afternoon . . . I was sitting by the window and heard it all. (Embraces Sonya.) Let’s be reconciled. How are you, my dear little girl . . . Peace and harmony!

DYADIN (rubbing his hands). This is fascinating!

YELENA ANDREEVNA (to Khrushchov). Mikhail Lvovich. (Gives him her hand.) Let the dead past bury its dead. Good afternoon, Fyodor Ivanych . . . Yulechka . . .

ORLOVSKY. My dear boy, our professor’s lady is glorious, a beauty . . . She has come back, returned to us once more . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I missed you all so much. Afternoon, Aleksandr! (Extends her hand to her husband, but he turns away.) Aleksandr!

SEREBRYAKOV. You shirked your duty.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Aleksandr!

SEREBRYAKOV. I won’t deny that I’m very glad to see you and I’m ready to talk to you, but not here, at home . . . (Walks away from the table.)

ORLOVSKY. Sasha!

Pause.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. So . . . Which means, Aleksandr, our problem has a very easy solution: none at all. Well, if that’s how it has to be! I’m a walkon part, my happiness is like a canary’s, a woman’s happiness . . . To be a stay-at-home all my life, eat, drink, sleep, and listen every day to people talk about their gout, their rights, their just deserts. Why are you all hanging your heads, as if you’re embarrassed? Let’s have a swig of that cordial, shall we? Ech!

DYADIN. It’ll all turn out all right, things’ll work out, we’ll all live happily ever after.

FYODOR IVANOVICH (walks over to Serebryakov, excited). Aleksandr Vladi-mirovich, I’m touched . . . I beg you, caress your wife, say at least one kind word to her, and, on the word of a gentleman, I’ll be your faithful friend for life, I’ll give you my best team of horses.

SEREBRYAKOV. Thank you, but, excuse me, I don’t understand you . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Hm . . . you don’t understand . . . Once I was on my way home from hunting, lo and behold — on a tree there sits a screech owl. I send him a blast of buckshot! He goes on sitting . . . I send a number nine cartridge . . . He goes on sitting . . . Nothing gets through to him. He goes on sitting and just blinks his eyes.

SEREBRYAKOV. To what are you referring?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. To the screech owl. (Returns to the table.)

ORLOVSKY (hearkening). Excuse me, gentlemen . . . Quiet . . . I think there’s an alarm bell ringing somewhere . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH (who has seen the glow). Oy-oy-oy! Look at the sky! What a glow!

ORLOVSKY. Good heavens, we’re sitting here and we’ll miss it!

DYADIN. Neat.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. My, my, my! That’s what I call fireworks! It’s near Alekseevskoe.

KHRUSHCHOV. No, Alekseevskoe would be more to the right . . . More likely it’s at Novo-Petrovskoe.

YULYA. How awful! I’m afraid of fires!

KHRUSHCHOV. It’s definitely Novo-Petrovskoe.

DYADIN (shouts). Semyon, run to the dam, and find out where the fire is coming from. Maybe you can see it!

SEMYON (shouts). It’s the Telibeev forest on fire.

DYADIN. What?

SEMYON. The Telibeev forest!

DYADIN. The forest . . .

Prolonged pause.

KHRUSHCHOV. I have to go there . . . to the fire. Good-bye . . . Excuse me, I was brusque—it’s because I’ve never felt so depressed as today . . . My heart is heavy . . . But that’s not a problem . . . One has to be a man and stand firmly on one’s own feet. I won’t shoot myself and throw myself under the mill wheel . . . I may not be a hero, but I shall become one! I shall grow eagle’s wings, and neither this glow nor the devil himself will frighten me! Let the forests burn — I shall plant new ones! If one woman fails to love me, I shall love another woman! (Exits quickly.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA. What a fine fellow!

ORLOVSKY. Yes . . . “If one woman fails to love me,—I shall love another woman.” What’s that supposed to mean?

SONYA. Take me away from here . . . I want to go home . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. Yes, it’s high time we went. The damp here is impossible. My lap rug and my overcoat are somewhere . . .

ZHELTUKHIN. The lap rug’s in the carriage, and the overcoat’s here. (Hands him the overcoat.)

SONYA (powerfully agitated). Take me away from here . . . Take me away . . .

ZHELTUKHIN. I’m at your service . . .

SONYA. No, I’ll go with my godfather. Take me with you, godfather dear . . .

ORLOVSKY. Let’s go, my dear girl, let’s go. (Helps her to put on her things.)

ZHELTUKHIN (aside). Damn it all . . . Nothing but bad behavior and humiliation.

FYODOR IVANOVICH and YULYA pack the dishes and napkins into the basket.

SEREBRYAKOV. The heel of my left foot is aching . . . Rheumatism, I suppose . . . I won’t sleep all night again.

YELENA ANDREEVNA (buttoning up her husband’s overcoat). Dear Ilya Ilyich, bring my hat and my cape from the house!

DYADIN. Right this minute! (Exits into the house and returns with the hat and the cape.)

ORLOVSKY. The glow, my dear girl, has terrified you. Don’t be afraid, it’s dying down. The fire is being put out . . .

YULYA. There’s half a jar of sour-cherry jam left . . . Well, let Ilya Ilyich finish it off. (To her brother.) Lyonochka, take the basket.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I’m ready. (To her hushand.) Well, take me, statue of the Commendatore,⁵⁰ and let’s go to hell together in your twenty-six melancholy rooms! That’s all I’m good for!

SEREBRYAKOV. Statue of the Commendatore . . . I ought to laugh at that metaphor, but the pain in my foot prevents me. (To everyone.) Good-bye, my friends! Thank you for your hospitality and the pleasant company . . . A magnificent evening, excellent tea — it’s all very nice, but, excuse me, there’s something of yours that I cannot accept—this homegrown philosophy of yours and your views on life. One must take action, gentlemen. Your way is impossible! One must take action . . . Yes, indeed . . . Good-bye. (Exits with his wife.)

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Let’s go, cape-able lady! (To his father.) Good-bye, progenitor! (Exits with YULYA.)

ZHELTUKHIN (with the hasket, following him). This basket is heavy, damn it . . . I can’t stand these picnics. (Exits and shouts offstage.) Aleksey, drive up!

X

ORLOVSKY, SONYA, and DYADIN.

ORLOVSKY (to Sonya). Well, why are you still sitting? Let’s go, sweetie-pie . . . (Exits with Sonya.)

DYADIN (aside). And nobody said good-bye to me . . . It’s fascinating! (Puts out the candles.)

ORLOVSKY (to Sonya). What’s wrong with you?

SONYA. I can’t go, godfather dear . . . I haven’t got the strength! I’m in despair, godfather dear . . . I’m in despair! It’s unbearably hard!

ORLOVSKY (anxious). What is it? My dear girl, my beauty . . .

SONYA. Let’s stay . . . Let’s remain here a while.

ORLOVSKY. First it’s take me home, then it’s stay here . . . I can’t figure you out . . .

SONYA. This is where I lost my happiness today . . . I can’t . . . Ah, godfather dear, why aren’t I dead! (Embraces him.) Ah, if only you knew, if only you knew!

ORLOVSKY. Take a sip of water . . . Let’s sit for a while . . . come on . . .

DYADIN. What’s the matter? Sofya Aleksandrovna, dearie . . . I can’t, I’m all a-tremble . . . (Tearfully.) I can’t look at this . . . My dear little child . . .

SONYA. Ilya Ilyich, my dear, take me to the fire! I implore you!

ORLOVSKY. Why do you have to be at the fire? What are you going to do there?

SONYA. I implore you, take me or I’ll go there on my own. I’m in despair . . . Godfather dear, it’s hard for me, unbearably hard. Take me to the fire.

KHRUSHCHOV enters hurriedly.

XI

The same and KHRUSHCHOV.

KHRUSHCHOV (shouts). Ilya Ilyich!

DYADIN. Over here! What’s up with you?

KHRUSHCHOV. I can’t get there on foot, lend me a horse.

SONYA ( on recognizing Khrushchov, joyously cries out). Mikhail Lvovich! (Goes to him.) Go on, godfather dear, I have to talk to him. (To Khrushchov.) Mikhail Lvovich, you said that you will love another woman . . . (To Orlovsky.) Go on, godfather dear . . . (To Khrushchov.) I am another woman now . . . I want nothing but the truth . . . Nothing, nothing but the truth! I love, love you . . . love . . .

ORLOVSKY. So that’s what that song and dance was all about. (Roars with laughter.)

DYADIN. It’s fascinating!

SONYA (to Orlovsky). Go away, godfather dear. (To Khrushchov.) Yes, yes, only the truth and nothing more . . . Talk to me, talk . . . I have told you everything . . .

KHRUSHCHOV (embracing her). My dove!

SONYA. Don’t go away, godfather dear . . . When you declared your love to me, I was breathless with joy the whole time, but I was shackled by prejudices; I was prevented from telling you my true feelings by the same thing that now prevents my father from smiling at Yelena. Now I’m free . . .

ORLOVSKY (roars with laughter). They’re singing in tune, at last! Scrambled on to the shore! I am pleased to congratulate you. (Bowing low.) Ah, you, naughty, naughty! Wasting time chasing one another’s tails!

DYADIN (embracing Khrushchov). Mishenka, dovie, I’m delighted! Mishenka!

ORLOVSKY (embracing and kissing Sonya). Darling, my little canary bird . . . My little god-daughter . . .

SONYA bursts out laughing.

Well, there she goes again!

KHRUSHCHOV. Excuse me, I can’t come to my senses . . . Let me talk to her a while . . . Don’t stand in our way . . . Please, leave us . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH and YULYA enter.

XII

The same, FYODOR IVANOVICH, and YULYA.

YULYA. But after all, Fedenka, you never stop talking nonsense! You never stop talking nonsense!

ORLOVSKY. Sssh! Quiet, kiddies! Here comes my buccaneer. Let’s hide, my friends, quick! Please!

ORLOVSKY, DYADIN, KHRUSHCHOV, and SONYA hide.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. I left my whip and gloves here.

YULYA. You never stop talking nonsense!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. All right, I’m talking nonsense . . . What of it? I don’t want to ride to your place right now . . . Let’s go for a walk, and then we’ll have something to eat.

YULYA. You are a true pain in the neck! Sheer torture! (Claps her hands.) Why, what a fool that Waffles is! The table still hasn’t been cleared! Someone could steal the samovar . . . Ah, Waffles, Waffles, you may be old, but you’ve got fewer brains than a baby!

DYADIN (aside). Thank you kindly.

YULYA. As we came by, there was someone laughing here . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH. It’s the peasant women going for a swim . . . (Picks up a glove.) Here’s somebody’s glove . . . Sonya’s . . . Today Sonya was bitten by a bug. In love with the Wood Goblin. She’s smitten with him up to her eyebrows, but he, the blockhead, doesn’t see it.

YULYA (angrily). Where are we going then?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. To the dam . . . Let’s go for a walk . . . There’s no prettier spot in the whole district . . . Beautiful!

ORLOVSKY (aside). My sonny-boy, a good-looker, with that bushy beard . . .

YULYA. I just heard a voice.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. “Nature’s wonderful works, where the wood goblin lurks, and the water nymphs perch in the branches . . .”⁵¹ That’s it to a T, uncle! (Claps her on the shoulder.)

YULYA. I’m not your uncle.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Let us reason in peace. Listen, Yulechka. I’ve gone through hell and high water . . . I’m already thirty-five, and I have no vocation, except as a lieutenant in the Serbian military and a noncom in the Russian reserves. I dangle between heaven and earth . . . I have to change my way of life, and you know . . . you understand, now I’ve got this notion in my head that if I do get married, my whole life will be turned around . . . Marry me, eh? It might as well be you as anyone else . . .

YULYA (embarrassed). Hm . . . well, you see . . . you’ve got to reform first, Fedenka.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Come on, don’t haggle like a gypsy! A straight answer!

YULYA. I’m ashamed . . . (Looking around.) Hold on, someone might come in or overhear us . . . I think Waffles is looking out the window.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Nobody’s there.

YULYA (flings herself around his neck). Fedenka!

SONYA bursts out laughing; ORLOVSKY, DYADIN, and KHRUSHCHOV laugh loudly, clap their hands, and shout: “Bravo! Bravo!”

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Phew! Scared the stuffing out of me! Where did you pop up from?

SONYA. Yulechka, congratulations! Me too, me too!

Laughter, kisses, noise.

DYADIN. This is fascinating! This is fascinating!

Curtain

VARIANTS TO

The Wood Goblin

From the censor’s manuscript.

ACT ONE

page 588 / After: (Lays her head on his breast) — I’ll go and bring you back a gift. I’ll go and get it.

page 589 / After: if that’s the way they want it! — (Annoyed.)

page 590 / After: Sergey Nikodimych! — Vasily, call in the guests!

page 590 / Replace: Please do. (Near the appetizers.)

with: Sit down, gentlemen, please. Many are called but few are chosen.

page 590 / After: That shouldn’t happen. The turkey is a delicate fowl. —

YULYA. Of course, they’re not geese. Geese take no work, but with turkeys you have keep a sharp lookout.

page 590 / After: Stop that, Waffles! I can’t stand it! —

YULYA. Eat, gentlemen, don’t stand on ceremony. Be so kind! Godfather dear, eat something! Let me serve you this tiny little sardine!

ORLOVSKY. Thank you, my girl, I’ll eat it.

page 591 / After: What a darling, what a dear . . . —

VOINITSKY. Time and again it’s a quarrel over the professor. They stop talking to one another and they snarl at one another, like mice in a sack of groats. Sometimes Sonichka doesn’t call her Yelena Andreevna, but “that woman” or “a certain person,” and the professor pretends not to notice it.

ORLOVSKY. That’s peculiar.

page 591 / Before: Just think about the luck he’s had! — I don’t know another man that lucky!

page 592 / After: you’ve seen her — young, charming, poetical, gracious —

page 592 / Replace: at least drop in for dinner . . . All right . . . (Exits.)

with: at least stop by for dinner . . . Please.

YULYA. All right. (Exits.)

ZHELTUKHIN (comes back to the table). I owe you an apology, Ivan Ivanovich. Last Sunday you celebrated a school opening, but I couldn’t come, word of honor. All day long my shoulder was aching. Thank you, my dear fellow, sincerely. (Extends his hand.)

ORLOVSKY. What for?

ZHELTUKHIN. What for?

If wisdom and virtue’s seeds you sow

The Russian people are bound to show

Always their heartfelt thanks.

ORLOVSKY. Well, look at that! Dear boy, you don’t suppose I built the school? That was my daughter.

page 593 / Replace: I’m even trembling . . . anybody who cheats on a wife or husband

with: I’m even trembling . . . (Gets up.) I don’t possess the gift of eloquence and talent, but allow me to speak my conscience without high-flown phrases. A spouse may be young, beautiful, let’s assume, but, gentlemen, youth and beauty will pass, while duty remains for all eternity. Anybody who cheats on a wife or husband —

page 593 / After: you wave your arms around . . . —

DYADIN. Hm . . . I’m sorry, sir! Gentlemen, let me ask your pardon for my outward appearance!

VOINITSKY. Now you’re getting angry. What a crank! Speak Russian and not Chinese, and then we won’t laugh at you.

page 594 / After: Greetings, lads! — (in a different voice.) Your healt’ we wish vla . . . vla . . .vla

page 594 / Before: It’s hot! — (Sits down.)

page 595 / Replace: Scenes V, VI, and VII with:

V

The same, ZHELTUKHIN, and YULYA.

VOINITSKY. So, Ivan Ivanovich, you say that you like the Wood Goblin a lot. Yes, I agree, he’s a fine, sympathetic individual.

YULYA. Greetings, Fedenka! (Exchanges kisses.)

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Greetings to the birthday boy.

VOINITSKY. I really, really like that Wood Goblin. Such a far-seeing, open mind . . .

ZHELTUKHIN. Misha Khrushchov? Oh sure! Upright, honorable, quite the convivial chap. But do you know . . . he’s a friend of mine, I’m very fond of him, but there are moments when I can’t stomach him. There’s something about him . . . I cannot put it into words, but something rather repellent. Pay close attention when he’s standing near you in profile, there’s a certain strange expression on his face . . . a blend of satyr and Mephistopheles. In short, you’ll understand what I mean.

VOINITSKY. I do understand.

YULYA. Look, godfather, here’s the gift I gave Lyonechka today! (Displays a little shoe to serve as a watch stand.)

ORLOVSKY. My darlin’, my little girl, a tiny shoe! That’s quite something . . .

YULYA. The gold thread alone cost eight and a half rubles. Look at the edging: tiny little pearls, tiny little pearls, tiny little pearls . . . And these are letters: Leonid Zheltukhin. And here in silk: “A gift to the one I love . . .”

DYADIN. Please let me have a look at it! Fascinating! A person endowed with a rich imagination might fancy that you stole this tiny shoe from the foot of an airy fairy.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Drop it . . . that’s enough of that! Yulya, have them serve champagne!

YULYA. Fedenka, that’s for tonight!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Well, why wait—for tonight! Bring it now! Or else I’m leaving. Word of honor, I’m leaving. Where do you keep it? I’ll go get it myself.

YULYA. You’re always making a mess of the housekeeping, Fedya. (To Vasily.) Vasily, here’s the key! The champagne’s in the storeroom, you know, in the corner by the sack of raisins, in a basket. Only make sure you don’t break anything.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Vasily, three bottles!

YULYA. They’ll never make a good housekeeper out of you, Fedenka . . . You always make a mess. (Serves everyone pie.) There’s chicken to come, carp and artichokes. Have some more, gentlemen . . . Dinner won’t be for a while yet, not until six . . .

VOINITSKY. I think someone just drove up . . . Did you hear?

ZHELTUKHIN. Yes . . . It’s the Serebryakovs . . . Finally!

VASILY. The Serebryakov family has arrived!

YULYA (cries out). Sonichka! (Runs out.)

VOINITSKY (sings). Let’s go and meet them, let’s go and meet them . . . (Exits.)

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Look at the way they’re rejoicing!

ZHELTUKHIN. The way Georges is rejoicing in particular! The tactlessness of some people! He sleeps with the Professor’s lady and cannot hide it. The way he lavished praise on her just now, before you came, was practically indecent.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. How do you know he’s sleeping with her?

ZHELTUKHIN. It’s the talk of the whole district, my dear fellow . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH. How about I go and stop your district’s gullet with this mustard-pot.

VI

The same, SEREBRYAKOV, MARIYA VASILYEVNA, VOINITSKY arm in arm with YELENA ANDREEVNA, SONYA, and YULYA (enter).

YULYA (kissing Sonya). My dearest! My dearest!

ORLOVSKY (going to meet them). Sasha, greetings, my dear fellow, greetings, my boy! (Exchanges kisses with the Professor.) Are you well? Shall we thank God?

SEREBRYAKOV. How about you, neighbor? You’re the same as ever, bravely done! Very pleased to see you. Been here long?

ORLOVSKY. Got here on Friday. Mariya Vasilyevna! How are you getting on, Your Excellency? (Kisses her hand.)

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. My dear . . . (Kisses him on the head.)

SONYA. Godfather dear!

ORLOVSKY. Sonechka! Dear heart! (Kisses her.) My little dove, my little canary . . .

SONYA. Your face is just as kind, sentimental, sweet as ever . . .

ORLOVSKY. And you’ve got taller and prettier and all grown up, dear heart . . .

SONYA. Well, how are you in general? Are you well?

ORLOVSKY. Frightfully well!

SONYA. Good for you, godfather! Ah, what a magnificent pie!

YULYA. Dearest!

FYODOR IVANOVICH (to Sonya). Aren’t you going to say hello to me? (Exchanges kisses with her.)

SONYA. And I didn’t even notice the elephant in the room. Sunburned, bristly . . . a regular spider! Fedya, if you care for me, quick, smear me some caviar.

ORLOVSKY (to Serebryakov). How are you getting on, neighbor? I expect you’re writing all the time?

SEREBRYAKOV. Yes, just a bit. That’s the routine I’m in: I work at my desk from morn to night. It’s a habit. How are you?

ORLOVSKY. What should be wrong with me? I’m alive! I turned my estate over to my son, married off my daughters to good people, and now I’m the freest man going. I know how to have a good time!

DYADIN (to Serebryakov). Your Excellency, you were pleased to be a bit late. The temperature of the pie has gone down considerably. May I introduce myself: Ilya Ilyich Dyadin, or, as some people very wittily express it on account of my pockmarked face, Waffles.

SEREBRYAKOV. Pleased to meet you.

DYADIN. Madame! Mademoiselle! (Bows to Yelena Andreevna and Sonya). Everyone here is a friend of mine, Your Excellency. Once I possessed a large fortune, but, owing to domestic vicissitudes, or, as the expression is in intellectual circles, for reasons over which the editor has no control, I had to give up my share to my own brother, who, on a certain unhappy occasion, was in arrears of seventy thousand rubles of government money. My profession: the exploitation of the tempestuous elements. Of my previous grandeur all that is left are my friends and a love of virtue. I make the stormy waves turn the wheel of a mill, which I rent from my friend the Wood Goblin.

VOINITSKY. Waffles, turn off the waterworks!

DYADIN. I shall always pay my reverent respects to the luminaries of science, who adorn our national horizon. Forgive me the audacity of dreaming of paying Your Excellency a visit and charming my heart with a colloquy about the latest scientific findings.

SEREBRYAKOV. Please do come. I shall be delighted.

SONYA. Now, do tell us, godfather . . . Where did you spend the winter? Where did you disappear to?

ORLOVSKY. I was in Gmunden, I was in Paris, Nice, London, dear heart . . .

SONYA. You lucky man! It must be nice to have lots of money. You just pick up and go.

DYADIN. Beg pardon, mademoiselle. I take the liberty of rephrasing your happy thought in this way: it must be nice not to need money. Not every millionaire leads a jolly life and not every beggar is downcast. The man who does not need money is nature’s nobleman.

SONYA. But what if you don’t have any money?

DYADIN. An extremely subtle observation! I am defeated. (Roars with laughter.) I am defeated! Bravo, mademoiselle!

SONYA laughs into her napkin.

Now, it would be interesting to observe this table a vol d’oiseau. What a fascinating nosegay! A combination of grace, beauty, profound learning, swee . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH (interrupting him). What a fascinating tongue! What the hell is this? You talk as if somebody were shaving your back with a carpenter’s plane . . . “Your piehole fill and your tongue keep still.”

SEREBRYAKOV (eats). “Your piehole fill and your tongue keep still.” I recall a minor episode involving that proverb. A certain professor—I don’t believe I need to name names—when I was in Petersburg, invited me to his home for lunch. On the appointed day I arrived at his summer cottage and among others ran into the late Sergey Mikhailovich Solovyov. We were early and so the host, in order to keep us busy, began to talk to us about persons who had come down in life. He talked at great length and bored us frightfully. I thought he’d never end. When they served the pie, Sergey Mikhailovich took a piece and said, “Your piehole fill and your tongue keep still.” Of course he said it automatically, with any ulterior motive, but the host took him at his word and shut up. It all turned a bit awkward.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA (bursts out laughing). I can imagine . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. Later we laughed long and hard.

VOINITSKY (aside). Yes, very funny!

Pause.

SONYA. When you were away, godfather dear, the whole winter was so boring it was simply awful.

ORLOVSKY. It’s your own fault. Why don’t you visit your neighbors?

SONYA. I did visit Yulechka, but as for the rest—no, thank you very much! God forbid. Boredom is preferable to our neighbors.

ORLOVSKY. Why is that?

SONYA. Spare me. Not a single ordinary person, they all deserve to be put in a museum. Populists in embroidered peasant blouses, country doctors, like Bazarov.¹

ORLOVSKY. You’ve no cause to think that way.

SONYA. Followers of Tolstoy, who, when they pay you a visit, insist on coming through the back door . . . no, spare me, for pity’s sake! And the poseurs in town get on my nerves too . . .

ORLOVSKY. You’ve got too much imagination! How come you don’t write serial stories for the papers?

VOINITSKY. She writes a diary. A really thick one! It’s resolved all the issues.

ORLOVSKY. Dear heart, you should fall in love and get married.

VOINITSKY. For pity’s sake, who’s she supposed to marry. Humboldt is dead, Edison’s in America, Lassalle’s dead too . . .

SONYA. Leave it to others to be ironical, but you shouldn’t, Uncle Georges . . .

VOINITSKY. What are you getting angry for?

SONYA. If you say another word, one of us will have to go home. You or I . . .

ORLOVSKY (roars with laughter). Why, what a temper!

VOINITSKY. Yes, a temper, I grant you that . . . (To Sonya.) Well, your little paw! Give me your little paw! (Kisses her hand.) Peace and harmony . . . I won’t do it again.

VII

The same and KHRUSHCHOV.

KHRUSHCHOV (coming out of the house). Why am I not an artist? What a wonderful composition.

ORLOVSKY (gleefully). Misha! My dear little godson!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. The wood goblin!

KHRUSHCHOV. Many happy returns to the birthday boy! Greeting, Yulechka, how pretty you look today! Godfather! (Exchanges kisses with Orlovsky). Sofya Aleksandrovna . . . (Greets everyone.)

ZHELTUKHIN. Well, how can a person be so late? Where were you?

KHRUSHCHOV. With a patient.

YULYA. The pie’s gone cold long ago.

KHRUSHCHOV. Never mind, Yulechka, I’ll eat it cold. Where should I sit?

SONYA. Sit down here . . . (Offers him the place beside her.)

KHRUSHCHOV. The weather’s splendid today. And that little pie is throwing me a mouth-watering glance! I’ll eat it up right now . . . (Drinks vodka.) To the birthday boy! I’ll taste this little pie . . . Yulechka, kiss this pie. It’ll make it tastier . . .

She kisses it.

Merci. How are you getting on, godfather? I haven’t seen you for a long time.

ORLOVSKY. Yes, we haven’t met for quite a while. I was abroad, you see.

KHRUSHCHOV. I heard, I heard . . . I envied you. Fyodor, how about you?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. I’m all right.

KHRUSHCHOV. How’s your business?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. I can’t complain. Only, there’s too much back and forth. Wears me down . . . From here to the Caucasus, from the Caucasus back here, from here back to the Caucasus—and it never ends. You’re on the go like a maniac. After all I’ve got two estates there!

KHRUSHCHOV. I know.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. I’m working at finding settlers and all I attract is tarantulas and scorpions. The business is going well in general, but as to “down, down, ye surging passions” — it’s the same old story.

KHRUSHCHOV. In love, of course?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. On which account, I need a drink. (Drinks.) Ladies and gentlemen, never fall in love with married women! Word of honor, it’s better to be wounded in the shoulder and shot in the leg, like your most humble servant, than love a married woman . . . So much trouble it’s simply . . .

SONYA. Hopeless?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Don’t be ridiculous! Hopeless . . . If a man seriously wanted to make a catch, he could catch anything at all! Hopeless, unrequited love, oohing and aahing—that’s just self-indulgence. If I will my gun not to misfire, it won’t. I can’t recall any time it misfired. Just like that, Sonya, old pal. And once I have my eye on a woman, I think it’ll be easier for her to fly to the moon than get away from me. You won’t get away from me, no! I wouldn’t have to say three sentences to her, before she’s in my power. Yes. I only have to say to her: “Madam, every time you look out a certain window, you must remember me. I will it.” Which means, she’ll remember me a thousand times a day. That’s not all, I bombard her every day with letters.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Letters are an unreliable medium. She may receive them but not read them.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. You think so? Hm . . . I’ve lived on this earth thirty-five years, and somehow haven’t met with such phenomenal women as have the fortitude not to open a letter.

ORLOVSKY (admiring him). How do you like that? My sonny boy! I was just the same, down to the last detail! Only I didn’t go to war, just drank vodka and wasted money—dreadful business!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. I do love her, Misha, seriously. If she only made the wish, I would give her everything: my freedom, my strength, my money. I’d carry her off to my place in the Caucasus, the mountains, we would live in clover . . . Yelena Andreevna, I would protect her, like a loyal hound, and for me she would be, like our marshal of nobility sings, “And thou shalt be queen of the world, my love for all eternity.” Ech, she doesn’t know the happiness she’s missing!

KHRUSHCHOV. Who is this happy creature?

FYODOR IVANOVICH. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing . . . But enough about this. Now let’s have a song from a different opera. I remember, about ten years ago—Lyonya was still in high school at the time—we were celebrating his birthday just as we are now. I was riding home from here, and at my right hand sat Sonya, and on my left Yulka, and both were holding on to my beard. Gentlemen, let’s drink to the health of the friends of my youth, Sonya and Yulya!

DYADIN (laughs loudly). This is fascinating! This is fascinating!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Once when the war was over I was getting drunk with a Turkish pasha in Trebizond . . . He starts asking me . . .

DYADIN (interrupting). Gentlemen, let’s drink a toast to distinguished relations! Vivat friendship! Long may it live!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Stop, stop, stop! Sonya, please pay attention! I’m going to make a wager! I am putting three hundred rubles down on the table! After lunch let’s go play croquet, and I’ll bet that I’ll get through all the hoops and back in one go.

SONYA. I accept. Only I haven’t got three hundred rubles.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. If you lose, you’ll sing to me forty times.

SONYA. Agreed.

DYADIN. This is fascinating! This is fascinating!

ZHELTUKHIN (getting up). Ladies and gentlemen, if we’re going to drink, let’s drink to better days, better people, to ideals!

SONYA bursts out laughing.

ORLOVSKY. Well, our girl’s gone off now! What’s come over you?

KHRUSHCHOV bursts out laughing.

And what’s wrong with you?

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. Sophie, that’s indecorous!

KHRUSHCHOV. Ugh, sorry, my friends . . . I’ll be done right away . . . right away . . . .

ZHELTUKHIN. You found something funny about my toast . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. Not at all. Word of honor, no. Absolutely no reason at all.

VOINITSKY. Just show the two of them a finger, and they’ll burst out laughing. Sonya! (Shows her a finger.) Here, look . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. That’s enough! (Looks at his watch.) Well, Mikhail was a jolly old soul, he called for his food and called for his bowl, and now his time is up. It’s time to go.

SONYA. Where are you off to?

KHRUSHCHOV. To a patient. My medical practice is as distasteful as a shrewish wife, or a long winter . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. Excuse me, and yet medicine is your profession, your vocation, so to speak . . .

VOINITSKY (ironically). He’s got another vocation. He excavates peat on his land.

SEREBRYAKOV. What?

VOINITSKY. Peat. Some engineer figured it out, like two times two, that his land contains seven hundred and twenty thousand rubles worth of peat. No joke.

KHRUSHCHOV. I don’t excavate peat for profit.

VOINITSKY. What do you excavate it for then?

KHRUSHCHOV. I like that question . . . What do I excavate it for? For tooth powder! (Annoyed.) All the Russian forests are toppling beneath the axe, the habitats of birds and beasts are dwindling, tens of thousands of trees are perishing, rivers are running shallow and drying up, gorgeous natural scenery is disappearing irretrievably, and all because lazy human beings can’t be bothered to bend down and pick up fuel from the earth. I don’t see anything to laugh about in that.

VOINITSKY. I’m not laughing. Where’d you get that idea?

KHRUSHCHOV. You destroy the forests, but they beautify the land, they teach people to understand beauty, their grandeur inspires us with a sense of grandeur. Forests alleviate a harsh climate. Where the climate is mild, less energy is spent on the struggle with nature and therefore human beings there are milder and more delicate. In countries where the climate is mild, the people are beautiful, athletic, very sensitive, their speech is refined, their movements graceful. There art and sciences flourish, their philosophy is not gloomy, their attitude to women is full of exquisite chivalry. You stare at me sarcastically, and everything I say strikes you as old and frivolous, but when I walk through the peasants’ forests that I have saved from being chopped down, or when I hear the wind rustling in my stand of saplings, planted by my own hands, I realize that the climate is to some slight degree in my control, and if, a thousand years from now, humanity is happy, then even I will be partially responsible. When I plant a birch tree, and then see how it grows green and sways in the wind, my soul swells with pride at the awareness that I am helping God create an organism.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Your health, Wood Goblin!

KHRUSHCHOV. A person has to be an unreasoning barbarian and have no fear of God to burn up this beauty in his stove, to destroy what we cannot create. Human beings are endowed with reason and creative faculties in order to enhance what is given to them but so far they have not created but destroyed. Forests are ever fewer and fewer, rivers dry up, wildlife is wiped out, the climate is spoiled, and every day the earth grows more impoverished and ugly.

VOINITSKY. Which is all very charming, but where, my dear fellow, did you get the idea that climates become milder because of forests? If you were to consider the matter not from a pulp-fiction point of view, but from a scientific one, you’d say quite the opposite . . .

KHRUSHCHOV. If you think things would be better without forests, then why are you sitting still and not destroying what’s left? Yegor Petrovich, you know what? Let’s not talk about this.

VOINITSKY. As you like.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. Ah!

SONYA. What’s the matter, Granny?

MARIYA VASILYEVNA (to Serebryakov). I beg your pardon, Aleksandr . . . I forgot to tell you . . . I must be losing my memory . . . today I got a letter from Kharkov from Pavel Alekseevich . . . He sent his regards . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. Thank you, delighted.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. He sent his new pamphlet and asked me to show it you.

SEREBRYAKOV. Interesting?

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. Interesting, but rather peculiar. He opposes the very thing he was defending seven years ago. It’s very, very typical of our times. Never have people betrayed their convictions as frivolously as they do now.

ZHELTUKHIN. No ideals!

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. Somehow the pieces on the board have been moved around, and it’s positively difficult to figure out nowadays who belongs to which faction and where their sympathies lie. It’s appalling!

VOINITSKY. It’s not at all appalling. Have some carp, maman.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. But I want to talk!

VOINITSKY. For fifty years now we’ve been talking about sympathies and factions, it’s high time we stopped.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. For some reason you don’t like to listen when I talk. Pardon me, Georges, but this last year you have changed so much that I utterly fail to recognize you . . . You used to be a man of steadfast convictions, a shining light . . .

VOINITSKY. Oh yes! I was a shining light but no one ever basked in my rays. May I leave the table? I was a shining light . . . Don’t rub salt in my wounds! Now I’m forty-seven. Before last year I was the same as you, deliberately trying to cloud my vision with all these abstractions to keep from seeing real life — and I thought I was doing the right thing. I never fell in love, wasn’t loved, had no family, didn’t drink wine, didn’t enjoy myself, because I was trying to consider all that as vulgar! And now, if you only knew how I hate myself for having wasted my time so stupidly when I could have had everything that’s withheld from me now by my old age! I’ve wasted my life stupidly, and the awareness of that is gnawing at my heart now.

SEREBRYAKOV. Hold on . . . Georges, you seem to be blaming your former convictions for something . . .

SONYA. That’s enough, Papa! It’s boring!

SEREBRYAKOV. Hold on . . . You are indeed blaming your former convictions for something. But they aren’t to blame, you are. You have forgotten that convictions without deeds are a dead letter. One must take action.

VOINITSKY. Take action? Not everyone is capable of being a perpetual-motion writing machine.

SEREBRYAKOV. What do you mean by that?

VOINITSKY. Nothing. Let’s change the subject. We’re not at home.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. I really am losing my memory . . . . I forgot to remind you, Aleksandr, to take your drops before lunch. I brought them along, but I forgot to remind you . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. You needn’t have.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. But after all you’re a sick man, Aleksandr! You’re a very sick man!

SEREBRYAKOV. Why shout it from the rooftops? Old, sick, old, sick . . . that’s all I ever hear! (To Zheltukhin.) Leonid Stepanych, may I leave the table and go inside? It’s rather hot here and the mosquitoes are ferocious.

ZHELTUKHIN. Please be so kind. Lunch is over.

SEREBRYAKOV. Thank you. (Exits into the house, followed by MARIYA VASILYEVNA.)

YULYA (to her brother). Go after the Professor! It’s impolite!

ZHELTUKHIN (to her). The hell with him! (Exits.)

DYADIN. Yuliya Stepanovna, may I thank you from the bottom of my heart. (Kisses her hand.)

YULYA. Don’t mention it, Ilya Ilyich! You’ve eaten so little . . .

They thank her.

Don’t mention it, gentlemen! You all ate so little!

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Well, gents, what shall we do now? Let’s go right now to the croquet lawn and settle our wager . . . and after that?

YULYA. After that we’ll have dinner.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. And after that?

KHRUSHCHOV. After that you can all come to my place. In the evening we’ll arrange a fishing party on the lake.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Excellent.

DYADIN. Fascinating.

KHRUSHCHOV. It’s really nice at my place, gentlemen! You sit at home in the evening or at night you go out on the lake in a boat; the sky is reflected in the water so that there’s one sky full of stars over head, and another down below under the boat. Two skies, two moons . . . It’s awe-inspiring!

SONYA. Let me get this straight, gentlemen. That means, right now we’re going to the croquet lawn to settle the wager . . . Then we’ll have an early dinner with Yulya and about seven we’ll drive over to the Woo . . . I mean, to Mikhail Lvovich’s. Wonderful. Let’s go, Yulechka, and get the balls.

She and YULYA exit into the house.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Vasily, bring the wine to the croquet lawn! We’ll drink to the health of the winner. Well, my old progenitor, let’s take part in this noble game.

ORLOVSKY. Wait, my own dear boy, I have to sit with the Professor for about five minutes, otherwise it would be impolite. One has to observe etiquette. Meanwhile play my ball, and I’ll be there soon . . . (Exits into the house.)

DYADIN. I shall go at once and listen to the most learned Aleksandr Vladi-mirovich. I anticipate a sublime pleasure, whi . . .

VOINITSKY. I’m sick to death of you, Waffles. Go on.

DYADIN. I’m going, sir. (Exits into the house.)

FYODOR IVANOVICH (going into the garden, sings). “And thou shalt be queen of the world, my love for all eternity . . .”(Exits.)

KHRUSHCHOV. I’m going to leave nice and quietly. (To Voinitsky.) Yegor Petrovich, I beg you most sincerely, let’s never talk about forests or medicine again. I don’t know why, but when you launch into that sort of talk, all day long I have the feeling I’ve eaten my dinner out of a rusty pot. My respects!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Sorry . . . Just now you invited everyone to your home . . . Am I included?

KHRUSHCHOV (embarrassed). I mean . . . Of course, of course! I’d be very pleased. However it’s going on four o’clock . . . My respects . . . (Exits.)

page 608 / After: life, my youth! . . . — Love for you has made me a different man . . .

ACT TWO

page 623 / Before: You’re angry with me — Let’s talk frankly, like friends.

ACT THREE

page 626 / Replace: Yes . . . a fine piece . . . it’s ever been so boring around here as it is now . . .

with: I don’t think it’s ever been so boring around here, you walk from room to room, you sit, you stand, as if waiting for something.

ORLOVSKY. But I like it, my dear boy. You sit, you stand, your shoulder itches, you scratch it, and time passes by.

VOINITSKY. As if waiting for something . . . And what are you waiting for? You look back, all your life’s been filled with boredom, you look at the present, more boredom.

page 627 / Replace: If I ever did have a bee in my bonnet . . . Let’s have some champagne!

with: VOINITSKY. He has to have chik-chak, chik-chak.

ORLOVSKY. A beautiful girl . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH. She slinks like a shadow, from room to room and can’t find a place for herself. She’s in love with the Wood Goblin.

VOINITSKY. Well, isn’t she the lucky girl.

FYODOR IVANOVICH. Why not? He’s a good fellow.

ORLOVSKY. Amen to that! May God help them . . . If people are good, you’ve got to act in a way that makes them even better. We ought to make the Wood Goblin some kind of gift. Fedya, you should send him a team of horses, or something . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH. All right. Remind me when we get home. A team of horses and maybe I could add a gun. (Stretches.) Oof! Gentlemen, let’s have some champagne, shall we?

page 629 / Replace:

YELENA ANDREEVNA. And what do you know about it? . . .

ORLOVSKY. A darling, a beauty . . .

with: YELENA ANDREEVNA. Don’t tempt me, you devil! (Exits.)

page 629 / Replace: Sour grapes! Curdled cream!

with: If you don’t want to live, then go to a desert, to a convent, die at last, but why hoodwink people, why under the guise of virtue pass off something that is downright criminal? After all, isn’t it criminal to cripple one’s youth, after all . . .

page 630 / After: Fine, thank God. — Only his neck hurts a bit.

page 631 / Replace: ORLOVSKY. The reception room it is . . . I couldn’t care less.

with: FYODOR IVANOVICH. Let’s go.

page 631 / Replace: YULYA (alone, after a pause.) . . . (Clicks beads on the abacus.)

with: YULYA (alone). First I have to . . . Two calves at three fifty a piece. I could charge three a piece for them . . . (Clicks.) A bullock . . . well, ten . . . (Clicks.) For yesterday’s barley thirty-two rubles. Eighty gallons of oil at twenty-three kopeks . . . Three times eight is twenty-four . . . four, carry the two, one times three is three . . . Hm . . . for the oil, that makes four rubles fourteen kopeks. (Clicks.) I can knock off the fourteen kopeks.

page 631 / Replace: They can’t match me up with a decent suitor!

with: You know, when you’ve got such a good, clever, exceptional brother, somehow you don’t want to marry any Tom, Dick, or Harry. After all, they can’t match me up with a decent suitor!

page 632 / After: spiritual bond with you . . . — We’ve been friends.

page 632 / After: What’s making you embarrassed, Yulechka? — Is it a secret or what?

page 633 / Replace: Scene VII

with:

VII

YELENA ANDREEVNA, then FYODOR IVANOVICH.

YELENA ANDREEVNA (alone). What is this? A letter from Georges to me! Why is that my fault? Oh, how cruel, how shameless. Her heart is so pure that she cannot talk to me . . . My God, what an insult . . . My God, my head is spinning, I’m going to faint . . .

FYODOR IVANOVICH (enters through the door at left and walks across the stage). Why do you all give a start when you see me?

Pause.

Hm . . . (Takes the letter from her hands and tears it to shreds.) Drop all this . . . You must think only of me . . . (Exits through the door at right.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA (alone). What did he just say? What did he do? Talking about windows again? That damned man embarrasses me, I’m afraid of him, but yet Sonya’s heart is so pure that she cannot talk to me . . . (Weeps.) I should get out of this maelstrom — out into the fields and walk day and night so that I see nothing, hear nothing, think nothing . . . (Goes to the door at left, but, on seeing ZHELTUKHIN and YULYA coming to meet her, exits through the central door.)

page 635 / Replace: Scene IX

with:

IX

The same, SEREBRYAKOV, ORLOVSKY, and MARIYA VASILYEVNA.

ORLOVSKY. I’m not in the best of health either, my dear boy. Why, for two days now my head’s been aching and my whole body tingles . . . (Blows into the palm of his hand.) And my breath is hot.

SEREBRYAKOV. Where are the others? I do not like this house. Just like a labyrinth. Twenty-six enormous rooms, everyone scatters, and you can never find anyone. (Rings.) Request Yegor Petrovich and Yelena Andreevna to come here!

ZHELTUKHIN. Yulya, you’ve got nothing to do, go and find Yegor Petrovich and Yelena Andreevna.

YULYA exits.

SEREBRYAKOV. Ill health one might be reconciled to, if the worse came to the worst, but what I cannot stomach is my state of mind at the present time. I have the feeling that I’m already dead or have dropped off the earth on to some alien planet.

ZHELTUKHIN. I’ve got exactly the same feeling. Here in Russia the only people who live well are the rich peasants and the heroes of Shchedrin’s novels.² And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you and I starved to death or . . . or well, generally speaking . . .

ORLOVSKY. It depends on how you look at it. That might be so. But this is the way I understand your mood, Sasha. Before you retired, before you wound up here, you were happy, content with yourself and others, you didn’t feel old or sick, but as soon as you wound up here against your will, everything went contrary for you: you don’t like the people, you don’t like yourself, the set-up here is alien to you, so you feel sick and old . . . In that case, of course, you’re bound to feel a turmoil in your soul . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. Yes, I do feel it.

ORLOVSKY. And when there’s turmoil in your soul, you can’t help yourself with words or tears or any kind of idea. Sasha, old pal, for forty years I led exactly the same kind of life as my Fyodor. I went on benders, and tossed money around, and when it came to the fair sex I was nobody’s fool either. The other day I was asking him: “Fedya, tell me honestly, how many women have you made unhappy in your time?” He thought a bit and says, “I don’t remember. Around sixty, but maybe it’s seventy. You can’t recall them all.” That’s how many I had too. Well sir, as soon I reached the age of forty, suddenly, Sasha, old pal, something came over me. A desolation, I didn’t know what to do with myself, I wept, didn’t want to see people, even considered shooting myself— in short, turmoil, and that’s that. What’s to be done then? I did one thing after another, I’d read books, I’d work, I’d travel — nothing helped! Well, sir, old pal o’ mine, now you’ll ask: what saved me? A trifle. I was paying a call on a now deceased neighbor of mine, his Most Serene Highness Prince Dmitry Pavlovich. We had a snack, then we had dinner . . . After dinner, to keep from napping, we arranged for target shooting in the courtyard. Scads and scads of people gathered round: the gentry, and peasants, and sportsmen, and even our Waffles. The desolation I was feeling, you understand — good Lord! I couldn’t bear it. Suddenly, tears welled up in my eyes, I started to sway and began to shout to the whole courtyard, at the top of my lungs: “My friends, good people, forgive me for Christ’s sake!” And at that very minute my heart grew pure, loving, warm, and from that time on, my dear boy, in all the district there’s no happier man than I am. And you should do the same thing.