The Complete Plays

THE CHERRY ORCHARD

“The next play I write will definitely be funny, very funny, at least in concept,” Chekhov declared to his wife, on March 7, 1901, after Three Sisters had opened. The concept, as the author sketched it to Stanislavsky, would incorporate a footman mad about fishing, a garrulous one-armed billiard player, and a situation in which a landowner is continually borrowing money from the footman. He also envisaged a branch of flowering cherry thrust through a window of the manor house.

Chekhov’s notebooks reveal that The Cherry Orchard had taken root even earlier, with the governess Charlotta, another farcical type, and the idea that “the estate will soon go under the hammer” the next ramification. The theme had a personal application. For the boy Chekhov, the sale of his home after his father’s bankruptcy had been painful. The imminent loss of one’s residence looms over his early plays, becomes the (literal) trigger of Uncle Vanya, and gives an underlying dynamic to Three Sisters.

The endangered estate, in Chekhov’s early plans, was to belong to a liberal-minded old lady who dressed like a girl, smoked, and couldn’t do without society, a sympathetic sort tailored to the Maly Theatre’s Olga Sadovskaya, who specialized in biddies and beldams. When the Maly Theatre refused to release her, Chekhov reshaped the role until it was suitable for someone of Olga Knip-per’s age. Only then did he conceive of Lopakhin. Varya first appeared as a grotesquely comic name, Varvara Nedotyopina (Varvara Left-in-the-Lurch): nedotyopa eventually became the catchphrase of old Firs.

As Chekhov’s letters reveal, he stressed the play’s comic nature, and was put out when the Moscow Art Theatre saw it as a tearful tragedy. Even if some of Chekhov’s complaints can be dismissed as a side effect of his physical deterioration, there is no doubt that the Art Theatre misplaced many of his intended emphases. He seems to have meant the major role to be the peasant-turned-millionaire Lopakhin, played by Stanislavsky. However, Stanislavsky, a millionaire of peasant origins, preferred the part of the feckless aristocrat Gaev, and handed Lopakhin over to Leonid Leonidov, a less experienced actor. Olga Knipper, whom the author saw in the grotesque role of the German governess, was cast as the elegant Ranevskaya. Immediately the central focus shifted to the genteel family of landowners, because the strongest actors were in those parts. Later on, fugitives from the Revolution identified so closely with Ranevskaya and Gaev that they disseminated a nostalgic view of the gentry’s plight throughout the West. Soviet productions then went to the opposite extreme, reinterpreting Lopakhin as a man of the people capable of building a progressive society, and the student Trofimov as an eloquent harbinger of that brave new world.

Choosing sides immediately reduces the play’s complexity and ambiguity. Chekhov had no axe to grind, not even the one that chops down the orchard. Neither Lopakhin nor Trofimov is invested with greater validity than Ranevskaya or Gaev. Trofimov is constantly undercut by comic devices: after a melodramatic exit line, “All is over between us,” he falls downstairs, and, despite his claim to be in the vanguard of progress, is too absent-minded to locate his own galoshes. Even his earnest speech about the idle upper classes and the benighted workers is addressed to the wrong audience: how can Ranevskaya possibly identify with the Asiatic bestiality that Trofimov indicts as a Russian characteristic? Only in the hearing of infatuated Anya do Tro-fimov’s words seem prophetic; at other times, his inability to realize his situation renders them absurd.

Chekhov was anxious to avoid the stage clichés of the kulak, the hardhearted, hard-fisted, loudmouthed merchant, in his portrayal of Lopakhin; after all, Lopakhin shares Chekhov’s own background as a man of peasant background who worked his way up in a closed society. He can be the tactless boor that Gaev insists he is, exulting over his purchase of the orchard and starting its decimation even before the family leaves. But, in the same breath, he is aware of his shortcomings, longs for a more poetic existence, and has, in the words of his antagonist Trofimov, “delicate, gentle fingers, like an artist . . . a delicate, gentle soul.” And for all his pragmatism, he too is comically inept when it comes to romance. His halfhearted wooing of Varya may result from a more deep-seated love of her foster mother.

Ironically, it is the impractical Ranevskaya who pricks Lopakhin’s dreams of giants and vast horizons and suggests that he examine his own gray life rather than build castles in the air. She may be an incorrigible romantic about the orchard and totally scatterbrained about money, but on matters of sex she is more clear-sighted than Lopakhin, Trofimov, or Gaev, who considers her “depraved.” Prudish as a young Komsomol, Trofimov is scandalized by her advice that he take a mistress; he had been annoyed that Varya should distrust his moments alone with Anya.

In short, any attempt to grade Chekhov’s characters as “right-thinking” or “wrong-headed” ignores the multi-faceted nature of their portrayal. It would be a mistake to adopt wholeheartedly either the sentimental attitude of Gaev and Ranevskaya to the orchard or the pragmatic and “socially responsible” attitude of Lopakhin and Trofimov. By 1900 there were many works about uprooted gentlefolk and estates confiscated by arrivistes. Pyotr Nevezhin’s Second Youth (1883), a popular melodrama dealing with the breakup of a nest of gentry, held the stage until the Revolution, and Chekhov had seen it. That same year Nikolay Solovyov’s Liquidation appeared, in which an estate is saved by a rich peasant marrying the daughter of the family. Chekhov would not have been raking over these burnt-out themes if he did not have a fresh angle on them. The Cherry Orchard is the play in which Chekhov most successfully achieved a “new form,” the amalgam of a symbolist outlook with the appurtenances of social comedy.

Perhaps the Russian critic A. R. Kugel was right when he wrote, “All the inhabitants of The Cherry Orchard are children and their behavior is child-ish.”¹ Certainly, Chekhov seems to have abandoned his usual repertory company: there is no doctor, no mooning intellectual complaining of a wasted life (Yepikhodov may be a parody of that), no love triangles except the comic one of Yepikhodov-Dunyasha-Yasha. The only pistol is wielded by the hapless dolt Yepikhodov, and Nina’s mysterious enveloping “talma” in The Seagull has dwindled into Dunyasha’s talmochka, a fancy term for a shawl. Soliloquies have been replaced by monologues that are patently ridiculous (Gaev’s speeches to the bookcase and the sunset) or misdirected (Trofimov’s speech on progress). The absurdly named Simeonov-Pishchik, his “dear daughter Dashenka,” and his rapid mood shifts would be out of place in Three Sisters. The upstart valet Yasha, who smells of chicken coops and cheap perfume, recalls Chichikov’s servant Petrushka in Dead Souls, who permeates the ambience with his eflluvium. Gogol, rather than Turgenev, is the presiding genius of this comedy.

All the characters are misfits, from Lopakhin, who dresses like a rich man but feels like a pig in a pastry shop, to Yasha and Dunyasha, servants who ape their betters, to the expelled student Trofimov, aimlessly hustled from place to place, to Yepikhodov, who puts simple ideas into inappropriate language, to Varya, who is an efficient manager but longs to be a pilgrim, to the most obvious example, the uprooted governess Charlotta, who has no notion who she is. Early on, we hear Lopakhin protest, “Got to remember who you are!” Jean-Louis Barrault, the French actor and director, suggested that the servants are satiric reflections of their master’s ideals:² old Firs is the senile embodiment of the rosy past Gaev waxes lyrical over; Yasha, that pushing young particle, with his taste for Paris and champagne, is a parody of Lopa-khin’s upward mobility and Ranevskaya’s sophistication; Trofimov’s dreams of social betterment are mocked by Yepikhodov reading Buckle and beefing up his vocabulary.

If there is a norm here, it exists offstage, in town, at the bank, in the restaurant, in Mentone and Paris, where Ranevskaya’s lover entreats her return, or in Yaroslavl, where Great Aunt frowns on the family’s conduct. Chekhov peoples this unseen world with what Vladimir Nabokov might call “homunculi.” Besides the lover and Auntie, there are Ranevskaya’s alcoholic husband and drowned son; Pishchik’s daughter and the Englishmen who find clay on his land; rich Deriganov, who might buy the estate; the Ragulins, who hire Varya; the famous Jewish orchestra; Gaev’s deceased parents and servants; the staff, eating beans in the kitchen; and a host of others to indicate that the cherry orchard is a desert island in a teeming sea of life. Chekhov had used the device in Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters, where Vanya’s dead sister, the prepotent Protopopov, Mrs. Colonel Vershinin, and Kulygin’s headmaster shape the characters’ fates but are never seen. In The Cherry Orchard, the plethora of invisible beings fortifies the sense of the estate’s vulnerability, transience, and isolation.

Barrault also pointed out that “the action” of the play is measured by the outside pressures on the estate. In Act One, the cherry orchard is in danger of being sold, in Act Two it is on the verge of being sold, in Act Three it is sold, and in Act Four it has been sold. The characters are defined by their responses to these “events,” which, because they are spoken of, intuited, feared, longed for, but never seen, automatically make the sale equivalent to Fate or Death in a play of Maeterlinck or Andreev. As Henri Bergson insisted,³ any living being who tries to stand still in the evolving flow of time becomes mechanical and thus comical in action. How do the characters take a position in the temporal flow—are they delayed, do they moved with it, do they try to outrun it? Those who refuse to join in (Gaev and Firs) or who rush to get ahead of it (Trofimov) can end up looking ridiculous.

Viewed as traditional comedy, The Cherry Orchard thwarts our expectations: the lovers are not threatened except by their own impotence, the servants are uppity but no help to anyone, all the characters are expelled at the end, but their personal habits have undergone no reformation. Ranevskaya returns to her lover; Gaev, at his most doleful moment, pops another candy in his mouth; Lopakhin and Trofimov are back on the road, one on business, the other on a mission. Even the abandonment of Firs hints that he cannot exist off the estate but is, as Ranevskaya’s greeting to him implies, a piece of furniture like “my dear little table.” This resilience in the face of change, with the future yet to be revealed, is closest to the symbolist sense of human beings trapped in the involuntary processes of time, their own mortality insignificant within the broader current. A Bergsonian awareness that reality stands outside time, dwarfing the characters’ mundane concerns, imbues Chekhov’s comedy with its bemused objectivity.

It also bestows on The Cherry Orchard its sense of persons suspended for the nonce. The present barely exists, elbowed aside by memory and nostalgia on the one hand and by expectation and hope on the other. When the play first opened, the critic M. Nevedomsky remarked that the characters are “living persons, painted with the colors of vivid reality, and at the same time schemata of that reality, as it were its foregone conclusions.” Or as Kugel put it more succinctly, “the inhabitants of The Cherry Orchard live, as if half asleep, spectrally, on the border line of the real and the mystical.”⁴

Chekhov’s friend the writer Ivan Bunin pointed out that there were no such cherry orchards to be found in Russia, that Chekhov was inventing an imaginary landscape.⁵ The estate is a wasteland in which the characters drift among the trivia of their lives while expecting something dire or important to occur. As in Maeterlinck, the play opens with two persons waiting in a dimly lit space, and closes with the imminent demise of a character abandoned in emptiness. Chekhov’s favorite scenarios of waiting are especially attenuated here, since the suspense of “What will happen to the orchard?” dominates the first three acts, and in the last act the wait for carriages to arrive and effect the diaspora frames the conclusion.

However, the symbolism goes hand-in-glove with carefully observed reality: they coexist. Hence the uneasiness caused by what seem to be humdrum characters or situations. Act Two, with its open-air setting, demonstrates this concurrence of reality and super-reality. Chekhov’s people are seldom at ease in the open. The more egotistic they are, like Arkadina and Serebryakov, the sooner they head for the safe haven of the house or, like Natasha, renovate nature to suit their taste. The last act of Three Sisters strands its protagonists in an uncongenial vacancy, with yoo-hoos echoing across the expanse.

By removing the characters in The Cherry Orchard from the memory-laden atmosphere of the nursery (where children should feel at home), Chekhov strips them of their habitual defenses. In Act Two the characters meet on a road, one of those indeterminate locations, halfway between the railway station and the house but, symbolically, halfway between past and future, birth and death, being and nothingness. Something here impels them to deliver their innermost thoughts in monologues: Charlotta complains of her lack of identity, Yepikhodov declares his suicidal urges, Ranevskaya describes her “sinful” past, Gaev addresses the sunset, Trofimov speechifies about what’s wrong with society, Lopakhin paints his hopes for Russia. As if hypnotized by the sound of their voices reverberating in the wilderness, they deliver up quintessences of themselves.

At this point comes the portentous moment of the snapped string. The moment is framed by those pauses that evoke the gaps in existence that Andrey Bely claimed were horrifying and that Beckett was to characterize as the transitional zone in which being made itself heard. Chekhov’s characters again recall Maeterlinck’s, faintly trying to surmise the nature of the potent force that hovers just outside the picture. The thought-filled pause, then the uncanny sound and the ensuing pause conjure up what lies beyond.

Even then, however, Chekhov does not forgo a realistic prextext for the inexplicable. Shortly before the moment, Yepikhodov crosses upstage, strumming his guitar. Might not the snapped spring be one broken by the clumsy bookkeeper? At the play’s end, before we hear the sound plangently dying away, we are told by Lopakhin that he has left Yepikhodov on the grounds as a caretaker. Chekhov always overlays any symbolic inference with a patina of irreproachable reality.

The party scene in Act Three is the supreme example of Chekhov’s intermingling of subliminal symbol and surface reality. Bely saw it as a “crystallization of Chekhov’s devices.” It so struck the imagination of the young director Meyerhold that he wrote to Chekhov, on May 8, 1904, that “the play is abstract like a symphony by Chaikovsky . . . in [the party scene] there is something Maeterlinckian, terrifying.” He later referred to “this nightmarish dance of puppets in a farce” in “Chekhov’s new mystical drama.”⁶

The act takes place in three dimensions: the forestage, with its brief interchanges by individual characters, the forced gaiety of the dancing in the background, and the offstage auction whose outcome looms over it all. Without leaving the sphere of the mundane, we have what Novalis called “a sequence of ideal events running parallel to reality.” Characters are thrust out from the indistinct background and then return to it. Scantily identified, the postal clerk and the stationmaster surge forward, unaware of the main characters’ inner lives, and make unwitting ironic comment. The stationmaster recites Aleksey Tolstoy’s orotund poem, “The Sinful Woman,” about a courtesan’s conversion by Christ at a lavish orgy in Judaea. The opening lines, describing a sumptuous banquet, cast a sardonic reflection on the frumps gathered on this dismal occasion. They also show the earlier interview between the puritanical Trofimov and the self-confessed sinner Ranevskaya to be a parodic confrontation between a Messiah in eyeglasses and a Magdalene in a Parisian ballgown. The act culminates in the moving juxtaposition of Ranevskaya’s weeping and Lopakhin’s laughter, as the unseen musicians play loudly at his behest.

The return to the nursery, now stripped of its evocative trappings, in Act Four, confirms the inexorable expulsion. In Act One, it has been a room to linger in; now it is a cheerless space in which characters loiter only momentarily on their way to somewhere else. The old Russian tradition of sitting for a moment before taking leave becomes especially meaningful when there are no chairs, only trunks and bundles to perch on. The ghosts that Gaev and Ranevskaya had seen in the orchard in the first act have now moved indoors, in the person of Firs, who is doomed to haunt the scene of the past, since he has no future.

The consummate mastery of The Cherry Orchard is revealed in an authorial shorthand that is both impressionistic and theatrical. The pull on Ranev-skaya to return to Paris takes shape in the telegram prop: in Act One, she tears up the telegrams; by Act Three, she has preserved them in her handbag; in Act Four, the lodestones draw her back. The dialogue is similarly telegraphic, as in Anya’s short speech about her mother’s flat in Paris. “Mama is living on the sixth floor, I walk all the way up, there are some French people there, ladies, an old Catholic priest with a pamphlet, and it’s full of cigarette smoke, not nice at all.” In a few strokes, a past is encapsulated: a high walk-up, signifying Ranevskaya’s reduced circumstances, her toying with religious conversion, a louche atmosphere.

Each character is distinguished by an appropriate speech pattern. Ranev-skaya constantly employs diminutives and terms of endearment; for her everyone is golubchik, “dovey.” She is also vague, using adjectives like “some kind of” (kakoy-to). Gaev is a parody of the after-dinner speaker: emotion can be voiced only in fulsome oration, thick with platitudes. When his flow is stanched, he falls back on billiard terms or stops his mouth with candy and anchovies. Pishchik has high blood pressure, so Chekhov the doctor makes sure he speaks in short, breathless phrases, a hodgepodge of old-world courtesy, hunting terms, and newspaper talk. Lopakhin’s language is more varied, according to his interlocutor: blunt and colloquial with servants, more respectful with his former betters. As suits a businessman, he speaks concisely and in well-structured sentences, citing exact numbers and a commercial vocabulary, with frequent glances at his watch. Only in dealing with Varya does he resort to ponderous facetiousness and even bleating.

Memorably, Firs’s “half-baked bungler” is the last line in the play. Its periodic repetition suggests that Chekhov meant it to sum up all the characters. They are all inchoate, some, like Anya and Trofimov, in the process of taking shape, others, like Gaev and Yepikhodov, never to take shape. The whole play has been held in a similar state of contingency until the final moments, when real chopping begins in the orchard and, typically, it is heard from offstage, mingled with the more cryptic and reverberant sound of the snapped string.

NOTES

1 A. R. Kugel, Russkie dramaturgi (Moscow: Mir, 1934), p. 120.

2 Jean-Louis Barrault, “Pourquoi La Cerisaie?,” Cahiers de la Compagnie Barrault-Renaud 6 (July 1954): 87–97.

3 Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, trans. Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York: Macmillan, 1911), pp. 88–89.

4 M. Nevedomsky, “Simvolizm v posledney drame A. P. Chekhova,” Mir bozhy 8, 2 (1904): 18–19. Kugel, op. cit., p. 125.

5 Ivan Bunin, O Chekhove (New York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1955), p. 216.

6 Andrey Bely, “Vishnyovy sad,” Vesy (Balances) 5 (1904); Vsevolod Meyerhold, Perepiska (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1976), p. 45; and “Teatr (k istorii tekhnike),” in Teatr: kniga o novom teatre (St. Petersburg: Shipovnik, 1908), pp.143–145.

THE CHERRY ORCHARD¹

Bишнё‚ый ca‰

A Comedy²

CHARACTERS ³

RANEVSKAYA, LYUBOV ANDREEVNA, a landowner

ANYA, her daughter, 17

VARYA, her foster daughter, 24

GAEV, LEONID ANDREEVICH, Ranevskaya’s brother

LOPAKHIN, YERMOLAY ALEKSEICH, a businessman

TROFIMOV, PYOTR SERGEEVICH, a university student

SIMEONOV-PISHCHIK, BORIS BORISOVICH, a landowner

CHARLOTTA IVANOVA, a governess

YEPIKHODOV, SEMYON PANTELEEVICH, a bookkeeper

DUNYASHA, a parlor maid

FIRS⁴

NIKOLAEVICH, a valet, an old-timer of 87

YASHA, a young valet

A VAGRANT

THE STATION MASTER

A POSTAL CLERK

GUESTS, SERVANTS

The action takes place on Ranevskaya’s country estate.⁵

ACT ONE

A room, which is still known as the nursery. One of the doors opens into Anya’s bedroom. Dawn, soon the sun will be up. It is already May, the cherry trees are in bloom, but it is chilly in the orchard, there is an early morning frost. The windows in the room are shut. Enter DUNYASHA carrying a candle and LOPAKHIN holding a book.

LOPAKHIN. Train’s pulled in, thank God. What time is it?

DUNYASHA. Almost two. (Blows out the candle.) Light already.

LOPAKHIN. But just how late was the train? A couple of hours at least. (Yawns and stretches.) That’s me all over, had to do something stupid! Drove over here on purpose, to meet them at the station, and spent the time fast asleep . . . Sat down and dropped off. Annoying . . . Though you should have woke me up.

DUNYASHA. I thought you’d gone. (Listening.) There, sounds like they’re driving up.

LOPAKHIN (listening). No . . . the luggage has to be loaded, one thing and another . . . (Pause.) Lyubov Andreevna’s been living abroad five years now, I don’t know what she’s like these days . . . A good sort of person, that’s her. A kind-hearted, unpretentious person. I remember, when I was just a kid about fifteen,⁶ my late father — he kept a shop in this village back then — punched me in the face with his fist, blood was gushing from my nose . . . We’d come into the yard back then for some reason, and he’d been drinking. Lyubov Andreevna, I remember as though it was yesterday, still a youngish lady, so slender, brought me to the washstand, here in this very room, the nursery. “Don’t cry,” she says, “my little peasant, it’ll heal in time for your wedding . . .”

Pause.

My little peasant . . . My father, true, was a peasant, and here I am in a white waistcoat, yellow high-button shoes. Like a pig’s snout on a tray of pastry . . .⁷ Only difference is I’m rich, plenty of money, but if you think it over and work it out, once a peasant, always a peasant . . .⁸ (Leafs through the book.) I was reading this here book and couldn’t make head or tail of it. Reading and nodding off.

Pause.

DUNYASHA. The dogs didn’t sleep all night, they can sense the mistress is coming home.

LOPAKHIN. What’s got into you, Dunyasha, you’re so . . .

DUNYASHA. My hands are trembling. I’m going to swoon.

LOPAKHIN. Much too delicate, that’s what you are, Dunyasha. Dressing up like a young lady, fixing your hair like one too. Mustn’t do that. Got to remember who you are.

YEPIKHODOV ⁹ enters with a bouquet; he is wearing a jacket and brightly polished boots, which squeak noisily. On entering, he drops the bouquet.

YEPIKHODOV (picks up the bouquet). Here, the gardener sent them, he says stick ‘em in the dining room. (He hands Dunyasha the bouquet)

LOPAKHIN. And bring me some kvas.¹⁰

DUNYASHA. Yes, sir. (Exits.)

YEPIKHODOV. There’s a morning frost now, three degrees below, but the cherries are all in bloom. I can’t condone our climate. (Sighs.) I can’t. Our climate cannot be conducive in the right way. Look, Yermolay Alekseich, if I might append, day before yesterday I bought myself some boots and they, I venture to assure you, squeak so loud, it’s quite out of the question. What’s the best kind of grease?

LOPAKHIN. Leave me alone. You wear me out.

YEPIKHODOV. Every day I experience some kind of hard luck. But I don’t complain, I’m used to it. I even smile.

DUNYASHA enters and gives Lopakhin a glass of kvas.¹¹

YEPIKHODOV. I’m on my way. (Bumps into a chair, which falls over.) Look . . . (As if in triumph.) There, you see, pardon the expression, what a circumstance, one of many . . . It’s simply incredible! (He exits.)

DUNYASHA. I have to confess, Yermolay Alekseich, Yepikhodov proposed to me.

LOPAKHIN. Ah!

DUNYASHA. I don’t know how to handle it . . . He’s a quiet sort, but sometimes he just starts talking, and you can’t understand a word. It’s nice and it’s sensitive, only you can’t understand a word. I kind of like him. He’s madly in love with me. As a person he’s always in trouble, something goes wrong every day. So around here we’ve taken to calling him Tons of Trouble . . .¹²

LOPAKHIN (hearkening). Listen, I think they’re coming . . .

DUNYASHA. They’re coming! What’s the matter with me . . . I’ve got cold chills.

LOPAKHIN. They’re coming. Let’s go meet them. Will she recognize me? It’s five years since last we met.

DUNYASHA (flustered). I’ll faint this minute . . . Ah, I’ll faint!

We hear the sound of two carriages drawing up to the house. LOPAKHIN and DUNYASHA go out quickly. The stage is empty. Noise begins in the adjoining rooms. FIRS, leaning on a stick, hurries across the stage; he has just been to meet Lyubov Andreevna; he is wearing an old suit of livery and a top hat; he mutters something to himself, but no words can be made out. A voice: “Let’s go through here.” LYUBOV ANDREEVNA,¹³ ANYA, and CHARLOTTA IVANOVNA with a lapdog on a leash, all three dressed in traveling clothes, VARYA in an overcoat and kerchief, GAEV, SIMEONOV-PISHCHIK, LOPAKHIN, DUNYASHA with a bundle and parasol, SERVANTS carrying suitcases—all pass through the room.

ANYA.¹⁴ Let’s go through here. Mama, do you remember what room this is?

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (joyfully, through tears). The nursery!

VARYA. It’s cold, my hands are numb. (To Lyubov Andreevna.) Your rooms, the white and the violet, are still the same as ever, Mama dear.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. The nursery, my darling, beautiful room . . . I slept here when I was a little girl . . . (Weeps.) And now I feel like a little girl . . . (She kisses her brother and Varya and then her brother again.) And Varya is just the same as ever, looks like a nun. And I recognized Dunyasha . . . (Kisses Dunyasha.)

GAEV. The train was two hours late. What’d y’ call that? What kind of system is that?

CHARLOTTA (to Pishchik). My dog eats nuts even.¹⁵

PISHCHIK (astounded).¹⁶ Can you imagine!

They all go out, except for ANYA and DUNYASHA.

DUNYASHA. We’re worn out with waiting . . . (Helps Anya out of her overcoat and hat.)

ANYA. I couldn’t sleep the four nights on the train . . . now I’m so frozen.

DUNYASHA. You left during Lent, there was snow then too, frost, and now? My darling! (She laughs and kisses her.) We’re worn out with waiting for you, my pride and joy . . . I’ll tell you now, I can’t hold it back another minute . . .

ANYA (weary). Always something . . .

DUNYASHA. Yepikhodov the bookkeeper right after Easter proposed to me.

ANYA. You’ve got a one-track mind . . . (Setting her hair to rights.) I’ve lost all my hair pins . . . (She is very tired, practically staggering)

DUNYASHA. I just don’t know what to think. He loves me, loves me so much!

ANYA (peering through the door to her room, tenderly). My room, my windows, as if I’d never gone away. I’m home! Tomorrow morning I’ll get up, run through the orchard . . . Oh, if only I could get some sleep! I couldn’t sleep the whole way, I was worried to death.

DUNYASHA. Day before yesterday, Pyotr Sergeich arrived.

ANYA (joyfully). Petya!

DUNYASHA. The gent’s sleeping in the bathhouse, the gent’s staying there. “I’m afraid,” says the gent, “to be a nuisance.” (Looking at her pocket watch.) Somebody ought to wake the gent up, but Varvara Mikhailovna gave the order not to. “Don’t you wake him up,” she says.

Enter VARYA, with a key ring on her belt.

VARYA. Dunyasha, coffee right away . . . Mama dear is asking for coffee.

DUNYASHA. Just a minute. (She exits.)

VARYA. Well, thank God you’re here. You’re home again. (Caressing her.) My darling’s here again! My beauty’s here again!

ANYA. What I’ve been through.

VARYA. I can imagine!

ANYA. I left during Holy Week, it was so cold then. Charlotta kept talking the whole way, doing tricks. Why you stuck me with Charlotta . . .

VARYA. You couldn’t have traveled by yourself, precious. Seventeen years old!

ANYA. We get to Paris, it was cold there too, snowing. My French is awful. Mama is living on the sixth floor, I walk all the way up, there are some French people there, ladies, an old Catholic priest with a pamphlet, and it’s full of cigarette smoke, not nice at all. And suddenly I started to feel sorry for Mama, so sorry for her, I took her head in my hands and couldn’t let go. Then Mama kept hugging me, crying . . .

VARYA (through tears). Don’t talk about it, don’t talk about it . . .

ANYA. The villa near Mentone¹⁷ she’d already sold, she had nothing left, nothing. And I hadn’t a kopek left either, we barely got this far. And Mama doesn’t understand! We sit down to dinner at a station, and she orders the most expensive meal and gives each waiter a ruble tip. Charlotta’s the same. Yasha insists on his share too, it’s simply awful. Of course Mama has a manservant, Yasha, we brought him back.

VARYA. I saw the low-life . . .

ANYA. Well, how are things? Have we paid the interest?

VARYA. What with?

ANYA. Oh dear, oh dear . . .

VARYA. In August the estate’s to be auctioned off . . .

ANYA. Oh dear . . .

LOPAKHIN (sticking his head in the doorway and bleating). Me-e-eh . . . (Exits.)

VARYA (through tears). I’d like to smack him one . . . (Shakes her fist.)

ANYA (embraces Varya, quietly). Varya, has he proposed? (VARYA shakes her head no.) He does love you . . . Why don’t you talk it over, what are you waiting for?

VARYA. I don’t think it will work out for us. He has so much business, can’t get around to me . . . and he pays me no mind. Forget about him, I can’t stand to look at him . . . Everybody talks about our getting married, everybody says congratulations, but as a matter of fact, there’s nothing to it, it’s all like a dream . . . (in a different tone.) You’ve got a brooch like a bumblebee.

ANYA (sadly). Mama bought it. (Goes to her room, speaks cheerfully, like a child.) And in Paris I went up in a balloon!

VARYA. My darling’s here again! My beauty’s here again!

DUNYASHA has returned with a coffeepot and is brewing coffee.

(Stands near the door.) The whole day long, darling, while I’m doing my chores, I keep dreaming. If only there were a rich man for you to marry, even I would be at peace, I’d go to a hermitage, then to Kiev . . . to Moscow, and I’d keep on going like that to holy shrines . . . I’d go on and on. Heaven! . . .¹⁸

ANYA. The birds are singing in the orchard. What time is it now?

VARYA. Must be three. Time for you to be asleep, dearest. (Going into Anya’s room.) Heaven!

YASHA enters with a lap rug and a traveling bag.

YASHA (crosses the stage; in a refined way). May I come through, ma’am?

DUNYASHA. A person wouldn’t recognize you, Yasha. You’ve really changed abroad.

YASHA. Mm . . . who are you?

DUNYASHA. When you left here, I was so high . . . (Measures from the floor.) Dunyasha, Fyodor Kozoedov’s daughter. You don’t remember!

YASHA. Mm . . . Tasty little pickle! (Glances around and embraces her, she shrieks and drops a saucer. YASHA exits hurriedly.)

VARYA (in the doorway, crossly). Now what was that?

DUNYASHA (through tears). I broke a saucer . . .

VARYA. That’s good luck.

ANYA (entering from her room). We ought to warn Mama that Petya’s here . . .

VARYA. I gave orders not to wake him.

ANYA (thoughtfully). Six years ago father died, a month later our brother Grisha drowned in the river, a sweet little boy, seven years old. Mama couldn’t stand it, she went away, went away without looking back . . . (Shivers.) How well I understand her, if only she knew!

Pause.

Since Petya Trofimov was Grisha’s tutor, he might remind her . . .

Enter FIRS in a jacket and white waistcoat.

FIRS (goes to the coffeepot; preoccupied). The mistress will take it in here . . . (Putting on white gloves.) Cawrfee ready? (Sternly to Dunyasha.) You! What about cream?

DUNYASHA. Oh, my goodness . . . (Exits hurriedly.)

FIRS (fussing with the coffeepot). Eh you, half-baked bungler¹⁹ . . . (Mumbles to himself.) Come home from Paris . . . And the master went to Paris once upon a time . . . by coach and horses . . . (Laughs.)

VARYA. Firs, what are you on about?

FIRS. What’s wanted, miss? (Joyfully.) My mistress has come home! I’ve been waiting! Now I can die . . . (Weeps with joy.)

Enter LYUBOV ANDREEVNA, GAEV, LOPAKHIN, and SIMEONOV-PISHCHIK, the last in a long-waisted coat of expensive cloth and baggy pantaloons.²⁰ GAEV, on entering, moves his arms and torso as if he were playing billiards.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. How does it go? Let me remember . . . Yellow in the corner! Doublette in the center!²¹

GAEV. Red in the corner! Once upon a time, sister, we used to sleep together here in this room, and now I’ve turned fifty-one, strange as it seems . . .

LOPAKHIN. Yes, time marches on.

GAEV. How’s that?²²

LOPAKHIN. Time, I say, marches on.

GAEV. It smells of cheap perfume²³ in here.

ANYA. I’m going to bed. Good night, Mama. (Kisses her mother.)

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. My dazzling little princess.²⁴ (Kisses her hands.) Are you glad you’re home? I can’t get over it.

ANYA. Good night, Uncle.

GAEV (kisses her face, hands). God bless you. How like your mother you are! (To his sister.) Lyuba, at her age you were just the same.

ANYA gives her hand to Lopakhin and Pishchik, exits, and shuts the door behind her.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. She’s utterly exhausted.

PISHCHIK. Must be a long trip.

VARYA (to Lopakhin and Pishchik). Well, gentlemen? Three o’clock, by this time you’ve worn out your welcome.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (laughing). And you’re still the same too, Varya. (Draws Varya to her and kisses her.) First I’ll have some coffee, then everybody will go.

FIRS puts a cushion under her feet.

Thank you, dear. I’ve grown accustomed to coffee. I drink it night and day. Thank you, my old dear. (Kisses Firs.)

VARYA. I’ve got to see if all the luggage was brought in . . . (Exits.)

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Can I really be sitting here? (Laughs.) I feel like jumping up and down and swinging my arms. (Covers her face with her hands.) But suppose I’m dreaming! God knows, I love my country, love it dearly, I couldn’t look at it from the train, couldn’t stop crying. (Through tears.) However, we should have some coffee. Thank you, Firs, thank you, my old dear. I’m so glad you’re still alive.

FIRS. Day before yesterday.

GAEV. He’s hard of hearing.

LOPAKHIN. I’ve got to leave for Kharkov right away, around five. What a nuisance! I wanted to feast my eyes on you, have a chat . . . You’re still as lovely as ever.

PISHCHIK (breathing hard). Even prettier . . . Dressed in Parisian fashions . . . “lost my cart with all four wheels . . .”²⁵

LOPAKHIN. Your brother, Leonid Andreich here, says that I’m an oaf, I’m a money-grubbing peasant,²⁶ but it doesn’t make the least bit of difference to me. Let him talk. The only thing I want is for you to believe in me as you once did, for your wonderful, heartbreaking eyes to look at me as they once did. Merciful God! My father was your grandfather’s serf, and your father’s, but you, you personally did so much for me once that I forgot all that and love you like my own kin . . . more than my own kin.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. I can’t sit still, I just can’t . . . (Leaps up and walks about in great excitement.) I won’t survive this joy . . . Laugh at me, I’m silly . . . My dear little cupboard. (Kisses the cupboard.) My little table.

GAEV. While you were away Nanny died.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (sits and drinks coffee). Yes, rest in peace. They wrote me.

GAEV. And Anastasy died. Cross-eyed Petrusha left me and now he’s working in town for the chief of police. (Takes a little box of hard candies out of his pocket and sucks one.)

PISHCHIK. My dear daughter Dashenka . . . sends her regards . . .

LOPAKHIN. I’d like to tell you something you’d enjoy, something to cheer you up. (Looking at his watch.) I have to go now, never time for a real conversation . . . well, here it is in a nutshell. As you already know, the cherry orchard will be sold to pay your debts, the auction is set for August twenty-second, but don’t you worry, dear lady, don’t lose any sleep, there’s a way out . . . Here’s my plan. Your attention, please! Your estate lies only thirteen miles from town, the railroad runs past it, and if the cherry orchard and the land along the river were subdivided into building lots and then leased out for summer cottages, you’d have an income of at the very least twenty-five thousand a year.

GAEV. Excuse me, what rubbish!

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. I don’t quite follow you, Yermolay Alekseich.

LOPAKHIN. You’ll get out of the summer tenants at least twenty-five rubles a year for every two and a half acres, and if you advertise now, I’ll bet whatever you like that by fall there won’t be a single lot left vacant, they’ll all be snapped up. In short, congratulations, you’re saved. The location’s wonderful, the river’s deep. Only, of course, it’ll have to be spruced up, cleared out . . . for example, tear down all the old sheds, and this house, say, which is absolutely worthless, chop down the old cherry orchard . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Chop it down? My dear, forgive me, but you don’t understand at all. If there’s anything of interest in the entire district, even outstanding, it’s none other than our cherry orchard.²⁷

LOPAKHIN. The only outstanding thing about this orchard is it’s very big. The soil produces cherries every other year, and then there’s no way to get rid of them, nobody buys them.

GAEV. The Encyclopedia makes reference to this orchard . . .

LOPAKHIN (after a glance at his watch). If we don’t think up something and come to some decision, then on the twenty-second of August the cherry orchard and the whole estate will be sold at auction. Make up your mind! There’s no other way out, I promise you. Absolutely none.

FIRS. In the old days, forty-fifty years back, cherries were dried, preserved, pickled, made into jam, and sometimes . . .

GAEV. Be quiet, Firs.

FIRS. And used to be whole cartloads of dried cherries were sent to Moscow and Kharkov. Then there was money! And in those days the dried cherries were tender, juicy, sweet, tasty . . . They had a recipe then . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. And where’s that recipe today?

FIRS. It’s forgot. Nobody remembers.

PISHCHIK (to Lyubov). What’s going on in Paris? What was it like? You eat frogs?

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. I ate crocodiles.

PISHCHIK. Can you imagine . . .

LOPAKHIN. So far there’s only been gentry and peasants in the country, but now there’s these vacationers. Every town, even the smallest, is surrounded these days by summer cottages. And I’ll bet that over the next twenty-odd years the summer vacationer will multiply fantastically. Now all he does is drink tea on his balcony, but it might just happen that on his two and a half acres he starts growing things, and then your cherry orchard will become happy, rich, lush . . .

GAEV (getting indignant). What drivel!

Enter VARYA and YASHA.

VARYA. Mama dear, there are two telegrams for you. (Selects a key; with a jangle opens the antique cupboard.) Here they are.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. They’re from Paris. (Tears up the telegrams without reading them.) I’m through with Paris . . .

GAEV. Lyuba, do you know how old that cupboard is? A week ago I pulled out the bottom drawer, took a look, and there are numbers branded on it. This cupboard was built exactly one hundred years ago. How d’you like that? Eh? Maybe we ought to celebrate its centenary. An inanimate object, but all the same, any way you look at it, this cupboard is a repository for books.

PISHCHIK (astounded). A hundred years . . . Can you imagine!

GAEV. Yes . . . This thing . . . (Stroking the cupboard.) Dear, venerated cupboard! I salute your existence, which for over a century has been dedicated to enlightened ideals of virtue and justice; your unspoken appeal to constructive endeavor has not faltered in the course of a century, sustaining (through tears) in generations of our line, courage, faith in a better future and nurturing within us ideals of decency and social consciousness.²⁸

Pause.

LOPAKHIN. Right . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. You’re still the same, Lyonya.

GAEV (somewhat embarrassed). Carom to the right corner! Red in the center!

LOPAKHIN (glancing at his watch). Well, my time’s up.

YASHA (handing medicine to Lyubov). Maybe you’ll take your pills now . . .

PISHCHIK. Shouldn’t take medicine, dearest lady . . . It does no good, or harm . . . Hand ‘em over . . . most respected lady. (He takes the pills, shakes them into his palm, blows on them, pops them into his mouth, and drinks some kvas.) There!

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (alarmed). You’ve gone crazy!

PISHCHIK. I took all the pills.

LOPAKHIN. He’s a bottomless pit.

They all laugh.

FIRS. The gent stayed with us Holy Week, ate half a bucket of pickles . . . (Mumbles.)

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. What is he on about?

VARYA. For three years now he’s been mumbling like that. We’re used to it.

YASHA. Second childhood.

CHARLOTTA IVANOVNA crosses the stage in a white dress. She is very slender, tightly laced, with a pair of pince-nez on a cord at her waist.

LOPAKHIN. Excuse me, Charlotta Ivanovna, I haven’t had time yet to welcome you back. (Tries to kiss her hand.)

CHARLOTTA (pulling her hand away). If I let you kiss a hand, next you’d be after a elbow, then a shoulder . . .

LOPAKHIN. My unlucky day.

Everybody laughs.

Charlotta Ivanovna, show us a trick!

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Charlotta, show us a trick!

CHARLOTTA. Nothing doing. I want to go to bed. (Exits.)

LOPAKHIN. Three weeks from now we’ll meet again. (Kisses Lyubov Andre-evna’s hand.) Meanwhile, good-bye. It’s time. (To Gaev.) Be suing you.²⁹ (Exchanges kisses with Pishchik.) Be suing you. (Gives his hand to Varya, then to Firs and Yasha.) I don’t want to go. (To Lyubov Andreevna.) If you reconsider this cottage business and come to a decision, then let me know, I’ll arrange a loan of fifty thousand or so. Give it some serious thought.

VARYA (angrily). Well, go if you’re going!

LOPAKHIN. I’m going, I’m going . . . (He leaves.)

GAEV. Oaf. All right, pardon . . . Varya’s going to marry him, that’s our Varya’s little intended!

VARYA. Don’t say anything uncalled for, uncle dear.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. So what, Varya, I’ll be very glad. He’s a good man.

PISHCHIK. A man, you’ve got to tell the truth . . . most worthy . . . And my Dashenka . . . also says that . . . says all sorts of things. (Snores but immediately wakes up.) But by the way, most respected lady, lend me . . . . two hundred and forty rubles . . . tomorrow I’ve got to pay the interest on the mortgage . . .³⁰

VARYA (alarmed). We’re all out, all out!

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. As a matter of fact, I haven’t a thing.

PISHCHIK. It’ll turn up. (Laughs.) I never lose hope. There, I think, all is lost, I’m a goner, lo and behold! — the railroad runs across my land and . . . pays me for it. And then, watch, something else will happen sooner or later . . . Dashenka will win two hundred thousand . . . she’s got a lottery ticket.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. The coffee’s finished, now we can go to bed.

FIRS (brushes Gaev’s clothes, scolding). You didn’t put on the right trousers again. What am I going to do with you!

VARYA (quietly). Anya’s asleep. (Quietly opens a window.) The sun’s up already, it’s not so cold. Look, Mama dear, what wonderful trees! My goodness, the air! The starlings are singing!

GAEV (opens another window). The orchard’s all white. You haven’t forgotten, Lyuba? There’s that long pathway leading straight on, straight on, like a stretched ribbon, it glistens on moonlit nights. You remember? You haven’t forgotten?

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (looks through the window at the orchard). O, my childhood, my innocence! I slept in this nursery, gazed out at the orchard, happiness awoke with me every morning, and it was just the same then, nothing has changed. (Laughs with joy.) All, all white! O, my orchard! After the dark, drizzly autumn and the cold winter, you’re young again, full of happiness, the angels in heaven haven’t forsaken you . . . If only I could lift off my chest and shoulders this heavy stone, if only I could forget my past!

GAEV. Yes, and the orchard will be sold for debts, strange as it seems . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Look, our poor Mama is walking through the orchard . . . in a white dress! (Laughs with joy.) There she is.

GAEV. Where?

VARYA. God keep you, Mama dear.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. There’s nobody there, it just seemed so to me. On the right, by the turning to the summerhouse, a white sapling was bending, it looked like a woman . . .

Enter TROFIMOV, in a shabby student’s uniform and eyeglasses.³¹

What a marvelous orchard! White bunches of blossoms, blue sky . . .

TROFIMOV. Lyubov Andreevna! (She has stared round at him.) I’ll just pay my respects and then leave at once. (Kisses her hand fervently.) They told me to wait till morning, but I didn’t have the patience . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA stares in bewilderment.

VARYA (through tears). This is Petya Trofimov.

TROFIMOV. Petya Trofimov, used to be tutor to your Grisha . . . Can I have changed so much?

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA embraces him and weeps quietly.

GAEV (embarrassed). Come, come, Lyuba.

VARYA (weeps). Didn’t I tell you, Petya, to wait till tomorrow.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. My Grisha . . . my little boy . . . Grisha . . . my son . . .

VARYA. There’s no help for it, Mama dear, God’s will be done.

TROFIMOV (gently, through tears). There, there . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (quietly weeping). A little boy lost, drowned . . . What for? What for, my friend? (More quietly.) Anya’s asleep in there, and I’m so loud . . . making noise . . . Well now, Petya? Why have you become so homely? Why have you got old?

TROFIMOV. On the train, a peasant woman called me: that scruffy gent.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. You were just a boy in those days, a dear little student, but now your hair is thinning, eyeglasses. Are you really still a student? (Goes to the door.)

TROFIMOV. I suppose I’ll be a perpetual student.³²

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (kisses her brother, then Varya). Well, let’s go to bed . . . You’ve got old too, Leonid.

PISHCHIK (follows her). That means it’s time for bed . . . Ugh, my gout. I’ll stay over with you . . . And if you would, Lyubov Andreevna, dear heart, tomorrow morning early . . . two hundred and forty rubles . . .

GAEV. He never gives up.

PISHCHIK. Two hundred and forty rubles . . . to pay the interest on the mortgage.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. I have no money, darling . . .

PISHCHIK. We’ll pay it back, dear lady . . . The most trifling sum.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Well, all right, Leonid will let you have it . . . Let him have it, Leonid.

GAEV. I’ll let him have it, hold out your pockets.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. What can we do, let him have it . . . He needs it . . . He’ll pay it back.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA, TROFIMOV, PISHCHIK, and FIRS go out. GAEV, VARYA, and YASHA remain.

GAEV. My sister still hasn’t outgrown the habit of squandering money. (To Yasha.) Out of the way, my good man, you smell like a chicken coop.

YASHA (with a sneer). But you, Leonid Andreich, are just the same as you were.

GAEV. How’s that? (To Varya.) What did he say?

VARYA (to Yasha). Your mother’s come from the village, since yesterday she’s been sitting in the servants’ hall, she wants to see you . . .

YASHA. To hell with her!

VARYA. Ah, disgraceful!

YASHA. That’s all I need. She could have come tomorrow. (Exits.)

VARYA. Mama dear is just as she was before, she hasn’t changed a bit. If it were up to her, she’d give away everything.

GAEV. Yes . . .

Pause.

If a large number of cures is suggested for a particular disease, it means the disease is incurable. I think, wrack my brains, I’ve come up with all sorts of solutions, all sorts, which means, actually, none. It would be nice to inherit a fortune from somebody, nice if we married our Anya to a very rich man, nice to go to Yaroslavl and try our luck with our auntie the Countess. Auntie’s really very, very wealthy.

VARYA (weeps). If only God would come to our aid.

GAEV. Stop sniveling. Auntie’s very wealthy, but she isn’t fond of us. In the first place, Sister married a lawyer, not a nobleman . . .

ANYA appears in the doorway.

Married a commoner and behaved herself, well, you can’t say very virtuously. She’s a good, kind, splendid person, I love her very much, but, no matter how you consider the extenuating circumstances, you still have to admit she’s depraved. You can feel it in her slightest movement.

VARYA (whispering). Anya’s standing in the doorway.

GAEV. How’s that?

Pause.

Extraordinary, something’s got in my right eye . . . my sight’s beginning to fail. And Thursday, when I was at the county courthouse . . .

ANYA enters.

VARYA. Why aren’t you asleep, Anya?

ANYA. I can’t fall asleep. I can’t.

GAEV. My teeny-weeny. (Kisses Anya’s face, hands.) My little girl . . . (Through tears.) You’re not my niece, you’re my angel, you’re everything to me. Believe me, believe . . .

ANYA. I believe you, Uncle. Everybody loves you, respects you . . . but dear Uncle, you must keep still, simply keep still. What were you saying just now about my Mama, your own sister? How come you said that?

GAEV. Yes, yes . . . (Hides his face in her hands.) It’s an awful thing to say! My God! God help me! And today I made a speech to the cupboard . . . like a fool! And as soon as I’d finished, I realized what a fool I’d been.

VARYA. True, Uncle dear, you ought to keep still. Just keep still, that’s all.

ANYA. If you keep still, you’ll be more at peace with yourself.

GAEV. I’ll keep still. (Kisses Anya’s and Varya’s hands.) I’ll keep still. Only this is business. Thursday I was at the county courthouse, well, some friends gathered round, started talking about this and that, six of one, half a dozen of the other, and it turns out a person can sign a promissory note and borrow money to pay the interest to the bank.

VARYA. If only God would come to our aid!

GAEV. I’ll go there on Tuesday and have another talk. (To Varya.) Stop sniveling. (To Anya.) Your Mama will talk to Lopakhin, he won’t refuse her, of course . . . And you, after you’ve had a rest, will go to Yaroslavl to the Countess, your great-aunt. That way we’ll have action on three fronts—and our business is in the bag! We’ll pay off the interest, I’m sure of it . . . (Pops a candy into his mouth.) Word of honor, I’ll swear by whatever you like, the estate won’t be sold! (Excited.) I swear by my happiness! Here’s my hand on it, call me a trashy, dishonorable man if I permit that auction! I swear with every fiber of my being!

ANYA (a more peaceful mood comes over her, she is happy). You’re so good, Uncle, so clever! (Embraces her uncle.) Now I feel calm! I’m calm! I’m happy!

Enter FIRS.

FIRS (scolding). Leonid Andreich, have you no fear of God? When are you going to bed?

GAEV. Right away, right away. Go along, Firs. Have it your own way, I’ll undress myself. Well, children, beddie-bye . . . Details tomorrow, but for now go to bed. (Kisses Anya and Varya.) I’m a man of the eighties . . . People don’t put much stock in that period,³³ but all the same I can say I’ve suffered for my convictions to no small degree in my time. There’s a good reason peasants love me. You’ve got to study peasants! You’ve got to know what . . .

ANYA. You’re at it again, Uncle!

VARYA. Uncle dear, you must keep still.

FIRS (angrily). Leonid Andreich!

GAEV. Coming, coming . . . You two go to bed. Two cushion carom to the center! I sink the white . . . (Exits followed by Firs, hobbling.)

ANYA. Now I’m calm. I don’t want to go to Yaroslavl. I don’t like my great-aunt, but all the same, I’m calm. Thanks to Uncle. (Sits down.)

VARYA. Got to get some sleep. I’m off. Oh, while you were away there was a bit of an uprising. There’s nobody living in the old servants’ hall, as you know, except the old servants: Yefimushka, Polya, Yevstigney, oh, and Karp. They started letting these vagabonds spend the night there —I held my peace. Only then, I hear, they’ve spread the rumor that I gave orders to feed them nothing but beans. Out of stinginess, you see . . . And this was all Yevstigney’s doing . . . Fine, I think. If that’s how things are, I think, just you wait. I send for Yevstigney . . . (Yawns.) In he comes . . . What’s wrong with you, I say, Yevstigney . . . you’re such an idiot . . . (Glancing at Anya.) Anechka!

Pause.

Fast asleep! . . . (Takes Anya by the arm.) Let’s go to bed . . . Let’s go! . . . (Leads her.) My darling is fast asleep! Let’s go! . . .

They go out.

Far beyond the orchard a shepherd is playing his pipes.

TROFIMOV crosses the stage and, seeing Anya and Varya, stops short.

Ssh . . . She’s asleep . . . asleep . . . Let’s go, dearest.

ANYA (softly, half-asleep). I’m so tired . . . all the sleigh bells . . . Uncle . . . dear . . . and Mama and Uncle . . .

VARYA. Let’s go, dearest, let’s go . . . (They go into Anya’s room.)

TROFIMOV (moved). My sunshine! My springtime!

Curtain

ACT TWO

A field. An old, long-abandoned shrine leaning to one side, beside it a well, large slabs that were once, apparently, tombstones, and an old bench. A road into Gaev’s estate can be seen. At one side, towering poplars cast their shadows; here the cherry orchard begins. Farther off are telegraph poles, and way in the distance, dimly sketched on the horizon, is a large town, which can be seen only in the best and clearest weather. Soon the sun will set. CHARLOTTA, YASHA, and DUNYASHA are sitting on the bench. YEPIKHODOV stands nearby and strums a guitar; everyone is rapt in thought. CHARLOTTA is wearing an old peaked cap with a vizor; she has taken a rifle off her shoulder and is adjusting a buckle on the strap.

CHARLOTTA (pensively). I haven’t got a valid passport,³⁴ I don’t know how old I am, and I always feel like I’m still oh so young. When I was a little girl, my father and momma used to go from fairground to fairground, giving performances, pretty good ones. And I would do the death-defying leap³⁵ and all sorts of stunts. And when Poppa and Momma died, a German gentlewoman took me home with her and started teaching me. Fine. I grew up, then turned into a governess. But where I’m from and who I am — I don’t know . . . Who my parents were, maybe they weren’t married . . . I don’t know. (Pulls a pickle out of her pocket and eats it.) I don’t know anything.

Pause.

It would be nice to talk to someone, but there is no one . . . I have no one.

YEPIKHODOV (strums his guitar and sings). “What care I for the noisy world, what are friends and foes to me . . .” How pleasant to play the mandolin!

DUNYASHA. That’s a guitar, not a mandolin. (Looks in a hand mirror and powders her nose.)

YEPIKHODOV. To a lovesick lunatic, this is a mandolin . . . (Sings quietly.) “Were but my heart aflame with the spark of requited love . . .”

YASHA joins in.

CHARLOTTA. Horrible the way these people sing . . . Phooey! A pack of hyenas.

DUNYASHA (to Yasha). Anyway, how lucky to spend time abroad.

YASHA. Yes, of course. I can’t disagree with you there. (Yawns, then lights a cigar. )

YEPIKHODOV. Stands to reason. Abroad everything long ago attained its complete complexification.

YASHA. Goes without saying.

YEPIKHODOV. I’m a cultured person, I read all kinds of remarkable books, but somehow I can’t figure out my inclinations, what I want personally, to live or to shoot myself, speaking on my own behalf, nevertheless I always carry a revolver on my person. Here it is . . . (Displays a revolver.)

CHARLOTTA. I’m done. Now I’ll go. (Shoulders the gun.) Yepikhodov, you’re a very clever fellow, and a very frightening one; the women ought to love you madly. Brrr! (On her way out.) These clever people are all so stupid there’s no one for me to talk to . . . No one . . . All alone, alone, I’ve got no one and . . . who I am, why I am, I don’t know. (Exits.)

YEPIKHODOV. Speaking on my own behalf, not flying off on tangents, I must express myself about myself, among others, that Fate treats me ruthlessly, like a small storm-tossed ship. If, suppose, I’m wrong about this, then why when I woke up this morning, to give but a single example, I look and there on my chest is a ghastly enormity of a spider . . . Like so. (Uses both hands to demonstrate.) Or then again, I’ll take some kvas, so as to drink it, and lo and behold, there’ll be something indecent to the nth degree, along the lines of a cockroach . . .

Pause.

Have you read Buckle?³⁶

Pause.

I should like to distress you, Avdotya Fyodorovna, with a couple of words.

DUNYASHA. Go ahead.

YEPIKHODOV. I would be desirous to see you in private . . . (Sighs.)

DUNYASHA (embarrassed). All right . . . only first bring me my wrap . . .³⁷ It’s next to the cupboard . . . it’s a bit damp here.

YEPIKHODOV. Yes, ma’am . . . I’ll fetch it, ma’am . . . . Now I know what I have to do with my revolver . . . (Takes the guitar and exits playing it.)

YASHA. Tons of Trouble! Pretty stupid, take it from me. (Yawns.)

DUNYASHA. God forbid he should shoot himself.

Pause.

I’ve got jittery, nervous all the time. Just a little girl, they brought me to the master’s house, now I’m out of touch with ordinary life, and my hands are white as white can be, like a young lady’s. I’ve got sensitive, so delicate, ladylike, afraid of every little thing . . . Awfully so. And, Yasha, if you deceive me, then I don’t know what’ll happen to my nerves.

YASHA (kisses her). Tasty little pickle! Of course, a girl ought to know how far to go, and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s a girl who misbehaves . . .

DUNYASHA. I love you ever so much, you’re educated, you can discuss anything.

Pause.

YASHA (yawns). Yes’m . . . The way I look at it, it’s like this: if a girl loves somebody, that means she’s immoral.

Pause.

Nice smoking a cigar in the fresh air . . . (Listening.) Someone’s coming this way . . . The masters . . .

DUNYASHA impulsively embraces him.

Go home, pretend you’d been to the river for a swim, take this bypath or you’ll run into them, and they’ll think I’ve been going out with you. I couldn’t stand that.

DUNYASHA (coughs quietly). Your cigar’s given me a headache . . . (Exits.)

YASHA remains, seated beside the shrine. Enter LYUBOV ANDREEVNA, GAEV, and LOPAKHIN.

LOPAKHIN. You’ve got to decide once and for all — time won’t stand still. The matter’s really simple, after all. Do you agree to rent land for cottages or not? Give me a one-word answer: yes or no? Just one word!

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Who’s been smoking those revolting cigars around here . . . (Sits.)

GAEV. Now that there’s a railroad, things are convenient.³⁸ (Sits.) You ride to town and have lunch . . . yellow to the center! I should go home first, play one game . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. You’ll have time.

LOPAKHIN. Just one word! (Pleading.) Give me an answer!

GAEV (yawning). How’s that?

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (looking into her purse). Yesterday I had lots of money, but today there’s very little left. My poor Varya feeds everybody milk soup to economize, in the kitchen the old people get nothing but beans, and somehow I’m spending recklessly . . . (Drops the purse, scattering gold coins.) Oh dear, they’ve spilled all over . . . (Annoyed.)

YASHA. Allow me, I’ll pick them up at once. (Gathers the money.)

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. That’s sweet of you, Yasha. And why did I go out to lunch . . . That nasty restaurant of yours with its music, the tablecloths smelt of soap . . . Why drink so much, Lyonya? Why eat so much? Why talk so much? Today in the restaurant you started talking a lot again and all beside the point. About the seventies, about the decadents.³⁹ And who to? Talking to waiters about the decadents!

LOPAKHIN. Yes.

GAEV (waves his hand in dismissal). I’m incorrigible, it’s obvious . . . (Irritably, to Yasha.) What’s the matter, forever whirling around in front of us . . .

YASHA (laughing). I can’t hear your voice without laughing.

GAEV (to his sister). Either he goes or I do . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Go away, Yasha, run along . . .

YASHA (handing the purse to Lyubov Andreevna). I’ll go right now. (Barely keeping from laughing.) Right this minute . . .

Exits.

LOPAKHIN. Deriganov the rich man intends to purchase your estate. They says he’s coming to the auction in person.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Where did you hear that?

LOPAKHIN. They were talking about it in town.

GAEV. Our auntie in Yaroslavl promised to send something, but when or how much she’ll send, we don’t know . . .

LOPAKHIN. How much is she sending? A hundred thousand? Two hundred?

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Well . . . around ten or fifteen thousand, and we’re glad to have it . . .

LOPAKHIN. Excuse me, such frivolous people as you, my friends, such unbusinesslike, peculiar people I’ve never run into before. Somebody tells you in plain words your estate is about to be sold, and you act as if you don’t understand.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. But what are we supposed to do? Teach us, what?

LOPAKHIN. I teach you every day. Every day I tell you one and the same thing. Both the cherry orchard and the land have got to be leased as lots for cottages, do it right now, immediately—the auction is staring you in the face! Can’t you understand! Decide once and for all that there’ll be cottages, they’ll lend you as much money as you want, and then you’ll be saved.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Cottages and vacationers—it’s so vulgar, excuse me.

GAEV. I absolutely agree with you.

LOPAKHIN. I’ll burst into tears or scream or fall down in a faint. It’s too much for me! You’re torturing me to death! (To Gaev.) You old biddy!

GAEV. How’s that?

LOPAKHIN. Old biddy! (Starts to exit.)

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (frightened). No, don’t go, stay, dovey . . . Please. Maybe we’ll think of something.

LOPAKHIN. What’s there to think about?

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Don’t go, please. With you here somehow it’s more fun . . .

Pause.

I keep anticipating something, as if the house were about to collapse on top of us.

GAEV (rapt in thought). Off the cushion to the corner . . . doublette to the center . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. We’ve sinned so very much . . .

LOPAKHIN. What kind of sins have you got . . .

GAEV (pops a hard candy into his mouth). They say I’ve eaten up my whole estate in hard candies . . . (Laughs.)

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Oh, my sins . . . I’ve always thrown money around wildly, like a maniac, and married a man who produced nothing but debts. My husband died of champagne — he was a terrible drunkard,—and, then, to add to my troubles, I fell in love with another man, had an affair, and just at that time — this was my first punishment, dropped right on my head,—over there in the river . . . my little boy drowned, and I went abroad, went for good, never to return, never to see that river again . . . I shut my eyes, ran away, out of my mind, and he came after me . . . cruelly, brutally. I bought a villa near Mentone, because he fell ill there, and for three years I didn’t know what it was to rest day or night: the invalid wore me out, my heart shriveled up. But last year, when the villa was sold to pay my debts, I went to Paris, and there he robbed me, ran off, had an affair with another woman, I tried to poison myself . . . so silly, so shameful . . . and suddenly I was drawn back to Russia, to my country, to my little girl . . . (Wipes away her tears.) Lord, Lord, be merciful, forgive me my sins! Don’t punish me any more! (Takes a telegram out of her pocket.) I received this today from Paris . . . He begs my forgiveness, implores me to come back . . . (Tears up telegram.) Sounds like music somewhere. (Listens.)

GAEV. That’s our famous Jewish orchestra. You remember, four fiddles, a flute, and a double bass.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Does it still exist? We ought to hire them some time and throw a party.

LOPAKHIN (listening). I don’t hear it . . . (Sings softly.) “And for cash the Prussians will frenchify the Russians.” (Laughs.) That was some play I saw at the theater yesterday, very funny.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. And most likely there was nothing funny about it. You have no business looking at plays, you should look at yourselves more. You all live such gray lives, you talk such nonsense.

LOPAKHIN. That’s true, I’ve got to admit, this life of ours is idiotic . . .

Pause.

My dad was a peasant, an imbecile, he didn’t understand anything, didn’t teach me, all he did was get drunk and beat me, with the same old stick. Deep down, I’m the same kind of blockhead and imbecile. I never studied anything, my handwriting is disgusting, I write, I’m ashamed to show it to people, like a pig.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. You ought to get married, my friend.

LOPAKHIN. Yes . . . that’s true.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. You should marry our Varya; she’s a good girl.

LOPAKHIN. Yes.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. She came to me from peasant stock, she works all day long, but the main thing is she loves you. Besides, you’ve been fond of her a long time.

LOPAKHIN. Why not? I’m not against it . . . She’s a good girl.

Pause.

GAEV. They’re offering me a position at the bank. Six thousand a year . . . Have you heard?

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. You indeed! Stay where you are . . .

FIRS enters, carrying an overcoat.

FIRS (to Gaev). Please, sir, put it on, or you’ll get wet.

GAEV (putting on the overcoat). You’re a pest, my man.

FIRS. Never you mind . . . This morning you went out, didn’t tell nobody. (Inspects him.)

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. How old you’re getting, Firs!

FIRS. What’s wanted?

LOPAKHIN. The mistress says, you’re getting very old!

FIRS. I’ve lived a long time. They were making plans to marry me off, long before your daddy even saw the light . . . (Laughs.) And when freedom came,⁴⁰1 was already head footman. I didn’t go along with freedom then, I stayed by the masters . . .

Pause.

And I recollect they was all glad, but what they was glad about, that they didn’t know.

LOPAKHIN. It used to be nice all right. In those days you could at least get flogged.

FIRS (not having heard). I’ll say. The peasants stood by the masters, the masters stood by the peasants, but now things is every which way, you can’t figure it out.

GAEV. Keep quiet, Firs. Tomorrow I have to go to town. They promised to introduce me to some general, who might make us a loan on an I.O.U.

LOPAKHIN. Nothing’ll come of it. And you won’t pay the interest, never fear.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. He’s raving. There are no such generals.

Enter TROFIMOV, ANYA, and VARYA.

GAEV. Look, here comes our crowd.

ANYA. Mama’s sitting down.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (tenderly). Come here, come . . . My darlings . . . (Embracing Anya and Varya.) If only you both knew how much I love you. Sit beside me, that’s right.

Everyone sits down.

LOPAKHIN. Our perpetual student is always stepping out with the young ladies.

TROFIMOV. None of your business.

LOPAKHIN. Soon he’ll be fifty and he’ll still be a student.

TROFIMOV. Stop your idiotic jokes.

LOPAKHIN. What are you getting angry about, you crank?

TROFIMOV. Stop pestering me.

LOPAKHIN (laughs). And may I ask, what do you make of me?

TROFIMOV. This is what I make of you, Yermolay Alekseich: you’re a rich man, soon you’ll be a millionaire. And just as an essential component in the conversion of matter is the wild beast that devours whatever crosses its path, you’re essential.

Everyone laughs.

VARYA. Petya, tell us about the planets instead.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. No, let’s go on with yesterday’s discussion.

TROFIMOV. What was that about?

GAEV. Human pride.⁴¹

TROFIMOV. Yesterday we talked for quite a while, but we didn’t get anywhere. Human pride, as you see it, has something mystical about it. Maybe you’re right from your point of view, but if we reason it out simply, without frills, what’s the point of human pride, what’s the sense of it, if man is poorly constructed physiologically, if the vast majority is crude, unthinking, profoundly wretched. We should stop admiring ourselves. We should just work.

GAEV. All the same you’ll die.

TROFIMOV. Who knows? What does that mean — you’ll die? Maybe man has a hundred senses and in death only the five we know perish, the remaining ninety-five live on.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Aren’t you clever, Petya! . . .

LOPAKHIN (ironically). Awfully!

TROFIMOV. Mankind is advancing, perfecting its powers. Everything that’s unattainable for us now will some day come within our grasp and our understanding, only we’ve got to work, to help the truth seekers with all our might. So far here in Russia, very few people do any work. The vast majority of educated people, as I know them, pursues nothing, does nothing, and so far isn’t capable of work. They call themselves intellectuals, but they refer to the servants by pet names,⁴² treat the peasants like animals, are poorly informed, read nothing serious, do absolutely nothing, just talk about science, barely understand art. They’re all earnest, they all have serious faces, they all talk only about major issues, they philosophize, but meanwhile anybody can see that the working class is abominably fed, sleeps without pillows, thirty or forty to a room, everywhere bedbugs, stench,⁴³ damp, moral pollution . . . So obviously all our nice chitchat serves only to shut our eyes to ourselves and to others. Show me, where are the day-care centers we talk so much about, where are the reading rooms? People only write about them in novels, in fact there aren’t any. There’s only dirt, vulgarity, Asiatic inertia . . .⁴⁴ I’m afraid of, I don’t like very earnest faces, I’m afraid of earnest discussions. It’s better to keep still!

LOPAKHIN. You know, I get up before five every morning. I work from dawn to dusk, well, I always have money on hand, my own and other people’s, and I can tell what the people around me are like. You only have to go into business to find out how few decent, honest people there are. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I think: Lord, you gave us vast forests, boundless fields, the widest horizons, and living here, we really and truly ought to be giants . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. So you want to have giants . . . They’re only good in fairy tales, anywhere else they’re scary.

Far upstage YEPIKHODOV crosses and plays his guitar.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (dreamily). There goes Yepikhodov . . .

ANYA (dreamily). There goes Yepikhodov . . .

GAEV. The sun has set, ladies and gentlemen.

TROFIMOV. Yes.

GAEV (quietly, as if declaiming). Oh Nature, wondrous creature, aglow with eternal radiance, beautiful yet impassive, you whom we call Mother, merging within yourself Life and Death, you nourish and you destroy . . .

VARYA (pleading). Uncle dear!

ANYA. Uncle, you’re at it again!

TROFIMOV. You’d better bank the yellow in the center doublette.

GAEV. I’ll be still, I’ll be still.

Everyone sits, absorbed in thought. The only sound is FIRS, softly muttering. Suddenly a distant sound is heard, as if from the sky, the sound of a breaking string, dying away, mournfully.⁴⁵

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. What’s that?

LOPAKHIN. I don’t know. Somewhere far off in a mineshaft the rope broke on a bucket.⁴⁶ But somewhere very far off.

GAEV. Or perhaps it was some kind of bird . . . something like a heron.

TROFIMOV. Or an owl . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (shivers). Unpleasant anyhow.

Pause.

FIRS. Before the troubles, it was the same: the screech owl hooted and the samovar never stopped humming.

GAEV. Before what troubles?

FIRS. Before freedom.⁴⁷

Pause.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. You know, everyone, we should go home. Evening’s drawing on. (To Anya.) You’ve got tears in your eyes . . . What is it, little girl? (Embraces her.)

ANYA. Nothing special, Mama. Never mind.

TROFIMOV. Someone’s coming.

A VAGRANT appears in a shabby white peaked cap and an overcoat; he is tipsy.

VAGRANT. May I inquire, can I get directly to the station from here?

GAEV. You can. Follow that road.

VAGRANT. Obliged to you from the bottom of my heart. (Coughs.) Splendid weather we’re having . . . (Declaims.) “Brother mine, suffering brother . . . come to the Volga, whose laments . . .”⁴⁸ (To Varya.) Mademoiselle, bestow a mere thirty kopeks on a famished fellow Russian . . .

VARYA is alarmed, screams.

LOPAKHIN (angrily). A person’s allowed to be rude only so far!⁴⁹

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (flustered). Take this . . . here you are . . . (Looks in her purse.) No silver . . . Never mind, here’s a gold piece for you . . .

VAGRANT. Obliged to you from the bottom of my heart! (Exits.)

Laughter.

VARYA (frightened). I’m going . . . I’m going . . . Oh, Mama dear, there’s nothing in the house for people to eat, and you gave him a gold piece.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. What can you do with a silly like me? I’ll let you have all I’ve got when we get home. Yermolay Alekseich, lend me some more! . . .

LOPAKHIN. At your service.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Come along, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time. And look, Varya, we’ve made quite a match for you, congratulations.

VARYA (through tears). It’s no joking matter, Mama.

LOPAKHIN. I’ll feel ya,⁵⁰ get thee to a nunnery . . .

GAEV. My hands are trembling; it’s been a long time since I played billiards.

LOPAKHIN. I’ll feel ya, o nymph, in thy horizons be all my sins remembered!⁵¹

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Come along, ladies and gentlemen. Almost time for supper.

VARYA. He scared me. My heart’s pounding.

LOPAKHIN. I remind you, ladies and gentlemen, on the twenty-second of August the estate will be auctioned off. Think about that! . . . Think! . . .

Everyone leaves except TROFIMOV and ANYA.

ANYA (laughing). Thank the vagrant, he scared off Varya, now we’re alone.

TROFIMOV. Varya’s afraid we’ll suddenly fall in love, so she hangs around us all day. Her narrow mind can’t comprehend that we’re above love. Avoiding the petty and specious that keeps us from being free and happy, that’s the goal and meaning of our life. Forward! We march irresistibly toward the shining star, glowing there in the distance! Forward! No dropping behind, friends!

ANYA (clapping her hands). You speak so well!

Pause.

It’s wonderful here today.

TROFIMOV. Yes, superb weather.

ANYA. What have you done to me, Petya, why have I stopped loving the cherry orchard as I used to? I loved it so tenderly, there seemed to me no finer place on earth than our orchard.

TROFIMOV. All Russia is our orchard. The world is wide and beautiful and there are many wonderful places in it.

Pause.

Just think, Anya: your grandfather, great-grandfather, and all your ancestors were slave owners, they owned living souls, and from every cherry in the orchard, every leaf, every tree trunk there must be human beings watching you, you must hear voices . . . They owned living souls — it’s corrupted all of you, honestly, those who lived before and those living now, so that your mother, you, your uncle, no longer notice that you’re living in debt, at other people’s expense, at the expense of those people whom you wouldn’t even let beyond your front hall . . .⁵² We’re at least two hundred years behind the times, we’ve still got absolutely nothing, no definite attitude to the past, we just philosophize, complain of depression, or drink vodka. It’s so clear, isn’t it, that before we start living in the present, we must first atone for our past, put an end to it, and we can atone for it only through suffering, only through extraordinary, unremitting labor. Understand that, Anya.

ANYA. The house we live in hasn’t been our house for a long time, and I’ll go away, I give you my word.

TROFIMOV. If you have the housekeeper’s keys, throw them down the well and go away. Be free as the wind.

ANYA (enraptured). You speak so well!

TROFIMOV. Believe me, Anya, believe! I’m not yet thirty, I’m young. I’m still a student, but I’ve already undergone so much! When winter comes, I’m starved, sick, anxious, poor as a beggar and—where haven’t I been chased by Fate, where haven’t I been! And yet always, every moment of the day and night, my soul has been full of inexplicable foreboding. I foresee happiness, Anya, I can see it already . . .

ANYA (dreamily). The moon’s on the rise.

We can hear YEPIKHODOV playing the same gloomy tune as before on his guitar. The moon comes up. Somewhere near the poplars VARYA is looking for Anya and calling, “Anya! Where are you?”

TROFIMOV. Yes, the moon’s on the rise.

Pause.

Here’s happiness, here it comes, drawing closer and closer, I can already hear its footsteps. And if we don’t see it, can’t recognize it, what’s wrong with that? Others will see it!

VARYA’S VOICE. Anya! Where are you?

TROFIMOV. That Varya again! (Angrily.) Aggravating!

ANYA. So what? Let’s go down to the river. It’s nice there.

TROFIMOV. Let’s go.

They leave.

Varya’s voice: “Anya! Anya!”

Curtain

ACT THREE

The drawing-room, separated from the ballroom by an arch. A chandelier is alight. We can hear a Jewish orchestra, the same one mentioned in Act Two, playing in the hallway. Evening. Grandrond is being danced in the ballroom. SIMEONOV-PISHCHIK’s voice: “Promenade a une paire!” The drawing-room is entered by: the first couple PISHCHIK and CHARLOTTA IVANOVNA, the second TROFIMOV and LYUBOV ANDREEVNA, the third ANYA and the POSTAL CLERK, the fourth VARYA and the STATION MASTER, etc. VARYA is weeping quietly and, as she dances, wipes away the tears. In the last couple DUNYASHA. They go around and through the drawing-room. PISHCHIK calls out: “Grand-rond, balangez!” and “Les cavaliers a genoux et remerciez vos dames!”⁵³

FIRS in a tailcoat crosses the room with a seltzer bottle on a tray. PISHCHIK and TROFIMOV enter the room.

PISHCHIK. I’ve got high blood pressure, I’ve already had two strokes, it’s tough dancing, but, as the saying goes, when you run with the pack, whether you bark or not, keep on wagging your tail. Actually, I’ve got the constitution of a horse. My late father, what a card, rest in peace, used to talk of our ancestry as if our venerable line, the Simeonov-Pishchiks, was descended from the very same horse Caligula made a senator . . .⁵⁴ (Sits down.) But here’s the problem: no money! A hungry dog believes only in meat . . . (Snores and immediately wakes up.) Just like me . . . I can’t think of anything but money . . .

TROFIMOV. As a matter of fact, your build has something horsey about it.

PISHCHIK. So what . . . a horse is a noble beast . . . you could sell a horse . . .

We hear billiards played in the next room. VARYA appears in the archway to the ballroom.

TROFIMOV (teasing). Madam Lopakhin! Madam Lopakhin!

VARYA (angrily). Scruffy gent!

TROFIMOV. Yes, I’m a scruffy gent and proud of it!

VARYA (brooding bitterly). Here we’ve hired musicians and what are we going to pay them with? (Exits.)

TROFIMOV (to Píshchík). If the energy you’ve wasted in the course of a lifetime tracking down money to pay off interest had been harnessed to something else, you probably, ultimately could have turned the world upside-down.

PISHCHIK. Nietzsche . . . a philosopher . . . the greatest, most famous . . . a man of immense intellect, says in his works that it’s all right to counterfeit money.

TROFIMOV. So you’ve read Nietzsche?⁵⁵

PISHCHIK. Well . . . Dashenka told me. But now I’m such straits that if it came to counterfeiting money . . . Day after tomorrow three hundred rubles to pay . . . I’ve already borrowed a hundred and thirty . . . (Feeling his pockets, alarmed.) The money’s gone! I’ve lost the money! (Through tears.) Where’s the money? (Gleefully.) Here it is, in the lining . . . I was really sweating for a minute . . .

Enter LYUBOV ANDREEVNA and CHARLOTTA IVANOVNA.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (humming a lezginka).⁵⁶ Why is Lyonya taking so long? What’s he doing in town? (To Dunyasha.) Dunyasha, offer the musicians some tea . . .

TROFIMOV. The auction didn’t take place, in all likelihood.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. And the musicians showed up at the wrong time and we scheduled the ball for the wrong time . . . Well, never mind . . . (Sits down and hums softly.)

CHARLOTTA (hands Pishchik a deck of cards). Here’s a deck of cards for you, think of a card, any card.

PISHCHIK. I’ve got one.

CHARLOTTA. Now shuffle the deck. Very good. Hand it over, oh my dear Mister Pishchik. Ein, zwei, drei!⁵⁷ Now look for it, it’s in your side pocket . . .

PISHCHIK (pulling a card from his side pocket). Eight of spades, absolutely right! (Astounded.) Can you imagine!

CHARLOTTA (holds deck of cards on her palm, to Trofimov). Tell me quick, which card’s on top?

TROFIMOV. What? Why, the queen of spades.

CHARLOTTA. Right! (To Pishchik.) Well? Which card’s on top?

PISHCHIK. The ace of hearts.

CHARLOTTA. Right! (Claps her hand over her palm, the deck of cards disappears.) Isn’t it lovely weather today!

She is answered by a mysterious female voice, as if from beneath the floor: “Oh yes, marvelous weather, Madam.”

You’re so nice, my ideal . . .

Voice: “Madam, I been liking you very much too.”⁵⁸

STATION MASTER (applauding). Lady ventriloquist, bravo!

PISHCHIK (astounded). Can you imagine! Bewitching Charlotta Ivanovna . . . I’m simply in love with you . . .

CHARLOTTA. In love? (Shrugging.) What do you know about love? Guter Mensch, aber schlechter Musikant.⁵⁹

TROFIMOV (claps Pishchik on the shoulder). Good old horse . . .

CHARLOTTA. Your attention please, one more trick. (Takes a laprug from a chair.) Here is a very nice rug. I’d like to sell it . . . (Shakes it out.) What am I offered?

PISHCHIK (astounded). Can you imagine!

CHARLOTTA. Ein, zwei, drei! (Quickly lifts the lowered rug.)

Behind the rug stands ANYA, who curtsies, runs to her mother, embraces her, and runs back to the ballroom amid the general delight.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (applauding). Bravo, bravo!

CHARLOTTA. One more time! Ein, zwei, drei! (Lifts the rug.)

Behind the rug stands VARYA, who bows.

PISHCHIK (astounded). Can you imagine!

CHARLOTTA. The end! (Throws the rug at Pishchik, curtsies, and runs into the ballroom.)

PISHCHIK (scurrying after her). You little rascal! . . . How do you like that! How do you like that! (Exits.)

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. And Leonid still isn’t back. I don’t understand what he can be doing in town all this time! Everything must be over there, either the estate is sold or the auction didn’t take place, but why keep us in suspense so long?

VARYA (trying to comfort her). Uncle dear bought it, I’m sure of it.

TROFIMOV (sarcastically). Sure.

VARYA. Great-aunt sent him power of attorney, so he could buy it in her name and transfer the debt. She did it for Anya. And I’m sure, God willing, that Uncle dear bought it.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Your great-aunt in Yaroslavl sent fifteen thousand to buy the estate in her name — she doesn’t trust us — but that money won’t even pay off the interest. (Hides her face in her hands.) Today my fate will be decided, my fate . . .

TROFIMOV (teases Varya). Madam Lopakhin! Madam Lopakhin!

VARYA (angrily). Perpetual student! Twice already you’ve been expelled from the university.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Why are you getting angry, Varya? He teases you about Lopakhin, what of it? You want to—then marry Lopakhin, he’s a good, interesting person. You don’t want to—don’t get married; darling, nobody’s forcing you.

VARYA. I take this seriously, Mama dear, I’ve got to speak frankly. He’s a good man, I like him.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Then marry him. What you’re waiting for I cannot understand!

VARYA. Mama dear, I can’t propose to him myself. For two years now people have been talking to me about him, everyone’s talking, but he either keeps still or cracks jokes. I understand. He’s getting rich, busy with his deals, no time for me. If only I’d had some money, even a little, just a hundred rubles, I’d have dropped everything, and gone far away. I’d have entered a convent.

TROFIMOV. Heaven!

VARYA (to Trofimov). A student ought to be intelligent! (in a gentle voice, tearfully) You’ve got so homely, Petya, grown so old! (To Lyubov Andreevna, no longer weeping.) Only I can’t do without work, Mama dear. I have to have something to do every minute.

Enter YASHA.

YASHA (can hardly keep from laughing). Yepikhodov broke a billiard cue!

He exits.

VARYA. What’s Yepikhodov doing here? Who gave him permission to play billiards? I don’t understand these people . . . (Exits.)

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Don’t tease her, Petya, can’t you see she’s miserable enough without that?

TROFIMOV. She’s just too officious, poking her nose into other people’s affairs. All summer long she couldn’t leave us in peace, me or Anya, she was afraid a romance might break out. What business is it of hers? And anyway, I didn’t show any signs of it, I’m so removed from banality. We’re above love!

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Well then, I must be beneath love. (Extremely upset.) Why isn’t Leonid back? If only I knew: is the estate sold or not? Imagining trouble is so hard for me I don’t even know what to think, I’m at a loss . . . I could scream right this minute . . . I could do something foolish. Save me, Petya. Say something, tell me . . .

TROFIMOV. Whether the estate’s sold today or not—what’s the difference? It’s been over and done with for a long time now, no turning back, the bridges are burnt. Calm down, dear lady. You mustn’t deceive yourself, for once in your life you’ve got to look the truth straight in the eye.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. What truth? You can see where truth is and where falsehood is, but I seem to have lost my sight. I can’t see anything. You boldly solve all the major problems, but tell me, dovey, isn’t that because you’re young, because you haven’t had time to suffer through any of your problems? You boldly look forward, but isn’t that because you don’t see, don’t expect anything awful, because life is still hidden from your young eyes? You’re more courageous, more sincere, more profound than we are, but stop and think, be indulgent if only in the tips of your fingers, spare me. This is where I was born, after all, this is where my father and my mother lived, my grandfather, I love this house, without the cherry orchard I couldn’t make sense of my life, and if it really has to be sold, then sell me along with the orchard . . . (Embraces Trofimov, kisses him on the forehead.) Remember, my son was drowned here . . . (Weeps.) Show me some pity, dear, kind man.

TROFIMOV. You know I sympathize wholeheartedly.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. But you should say so differently, differently . . . (Takes out a handkerchief, a telegram falls to the floor.) My heart is so heavy today, you can’t imagine. I can’t take the noise here, my soul shudders at every sound, I shudder all over, but I can’t go off by myself, I’d be terrified to be alone in silence. Don’t blame me, Petya . . . I love you like my own flesh and blood. I’d gladly let you marry Anya, believe me, only, dovey, you’ve got to study, got to finish your degree. You don’t do anything, Fate simply tosses you from place to place, it’s so odd . . . Isn’t that right? Isn’t it? And something’s got to be done about your beard, to make it grow somehow . . . (Laughs.) You look so funny!

TROFIMOV (picks up the telegram). I make no claim to be good looking . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. This telegram’s from Paris. Every day I get one. Yesterday too and today. That wild man has fallen ill again, something’s wrong with him again . . . He begs my forgiveness, implores me to come back, and actually I ought to go to Paris, stay with him a while. You look so disapproving, Petya, but what’s to be done, dovey, what am I to do, he’s ill, he’s lonely, unhappy, and who’s there to look after him, who’ll keep him out of mischief, who’ll give him his medicine at the right time? And what’s there to hide or suppress, I love him, it’s obvious, I love him, I love him . . . It’s a millstone round my neck, it’s dragging me down, but I love that stone and I can’t live without it. (Squeezes Trofimov’s hand.) Don’t judge me harshly, Petya, don’t say anything, don’t talk . . .

TROFIMOV (through tears). Forgive my frankness, for God’s sake: but he robbed you blind!

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. No, no, no, you mustn’t talk that way . . . (Covers her ears.)

TROFIMOV. Why, he’s a scoundrel, you’re the only one who doesn’t realize it! He’s a petty scoundrel, a nobody . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (getting angry, but under control). You’re twenty-six or twenty-seven, but you’re still a sophomoric schoolboy!

TROFIMOV. Is that so?

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. You should act like a man, at your age you should understand people in love. And you should be in love yourself . . . you should fall in love! (Angrily.) Yes, yes! And there’s no purity in you, you’re simply a puritan, a funny crackpot, a freak . . .

TROFIMOV (aghast). What is she saying?

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. “I am above love!” You’re not above love, you’re simply, as our Firs says, a half-baked bungler. At your age not to have a mistress! . . .

TROFIMOV (aghast). This is horrible! What is she saying! (Rushes to the ballroom, clutching his head.) This is horrible . . . I can’t stand it, I’m going . (Exits, but immediately returns.) All is over between us! (Exits to the hall.)

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (shouting after him). Petya, wait! You funny man, I was joking! Petya!

We hear in the hallway someone running up the stairs and suddenly falling back down with a crash. ANYA and VARYA shriek, but immediately there is the sound of laughter.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. What’s going on in there?

ANYA runs in.

ANYA (laughing). Petya fell down the stairs! (Runs out.)

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. What a crackpot that Petya is . . .

The STATION MASTER stops in the middle of the ballroom and recites Aleksey Tolstoy’s “The Sinful Woman.” ⁶⁰ The guests listen, but barely has he recited a few lines, when the strains of a waltz reach them from the hallway, and the recitation breaks off. Everyone dances. Enter from the hall, TROFIMOV, ANYA, VARYA, and LYUBOV ANDREEVNA.

Well, Petya . . . well, my pure-in-heart . . . I apologize . . . let’s dance . . . (Dances with TROFIMOV.)

ANYA and VARYA dance.

FIRS enters, leaves his stick by the side door. YASHA also enters the drawing-room, watching the dancers.

YASHA. What’s up, Gramps?

FIRS. I’m none too well. In the old days we had generals, barons, admirals dancing at our parties, but now we send for the postal clerk and the station master, yes and they don’t come a-running. Somehow I got weak. The late master, the grandfather, doctored everybody with sealing wax for every ailment. I’ve took sealing wax every day now for twenty-odd years, and maybe more, maybe that’s why I’m still alive.⁶¹

YASHA. You bore me stiff, Gramps. (Yawns.) How about dropping dead.

FIRS. Eh, you . . . half-baked bungler! (Mutters.)

TROFIMOV and LYUBOV ANDREEVNA dance in the ballroom, then in the drawing-room.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Merci. I’m going to sit for a bit . . . (Sits down.) I’m tired.

Enter ANYA.

ANYA (upset). Just now in the kitchen some man was saying the cherry orchard’s been sold already.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Sold to whom?

ANYA. He didn’t say. He left. (Dances with TROFIMOV; they both go into the ballroom.)

YASHA. There was some old man muttering away. Not one of ours.

FIRS. And Leonid Andreich still isn’t back, still not home. That topcoat he’s got on’s too flimsy, for between seasons, see if he don’t catch cold. Eh, when they’re young, they’re green!

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. I’ll die this instant! Yasha, go and find out to whom it’s been sold.

YASHA. He went away a long time ago, that old man. (Laughs.)

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (somewhat annoyed). Well, what are you laughing about? What’s made you so happy?

YASHA. Yepikhodov’s awfully funny. The man’s incompetent. Tons of Trouble.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Firs, if the estate is sold, then where will you go?

FIRS. Wherever you order, there I’ll go.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Why is your face like that? Aren’t you well? You know you ought to be in bed . . .

FIRS. Yes—(with a grin) I go to bed, and with me gone, who’ll serve, who’ll look after things? I’m the only one in the whole house.

YASHA (to Lyubov Andreevna). Lyubov Andreevna! Let me ask you a favor, be so kind! If you go off to Paris again, take me with you, please. For me to stick around here is absolutely out of the question. (Glances around, lowers his voice.) It goes without saying, you can see for yourself, the country’s uncivilized, the people are immoral, not to mention the boredom, in the kitchen they feed us garbage and there’s that Firs going around, muttering all kinds of improper remarks. Take me with you, be so kind!

Enter PISHCHIK.

PISHCHIK. May I request . . . a teeny waltz, loveliest of ladies . . . (LYUBOV ANDREEVNA goes with him.) Enchanting lady, I’ll borrow a hundred and eighty little rubles off you just the same . . . Yes, I will . . . (Dances.) A hundred and eighty little rubles . . .

They have passed into the ballroom.

YASHA (singing softly). “Wilt thou learn my soul’s unrest . . .”⁶²

In the ballroom a figure in a gray top hat and checked trousers waves its arms and jumps up and down; shouts of “Bravo, Charlotta Ivanovna!”

DUNYASHA (stops to powder her nose). The young mistress orders me to dance — lots of gentlemen and few ladies—but dancing makes my head swim, my heart pound, Firs Nikolaevich, and just now the postal clerk told me something that took my breath away.

Music subsides.

FIRS. Well, what did he tell you?

DUNYASHA. You, he says, are like a flower.

YASHA (yawns). How uncouth . . . (Exits.)

DUNYASHA. Like a flower . . . I’m such a sensitive girl, I’m awfully fond of compliments.

FIRS. You’ll get your head turned.

Enter YEPIKHODOV.

YEPIKHODOV. Avdotya Fyodorovna, you don’t wish to see me . . . as if I were some sort of bug. (Sighs.) Ech, life!

DUNYASHA. What can I do for you?

YEPIKHODOV. Indubitably you may be right. (Sighs.) But, of course, if it’s considered from a standpoint, then you, if I may venture the expression, pardon my outspokenness, positively drove me into a state of mind. I know my lot, every day I run into some kind of trouble, and I’ve grown accustomed to that long ago, so I look upon my destiny with a smile. You gave me your word, and even though I . . .

DUNYASHA. Please, let’s talk later on, but leave me alone for now. I’m dreaming now. (Toys with her fan.)

YEPIKHODOV. Every day I run into trouble, and I, if I may venture the expression, merely smile, even laugh.

Enter VARYA from the ballroom.

VARYA. Haven’t you gone yet, Semyon? Honestly, you are the most disrespectful man. (To Dunyasha.) Clear out of here, Dunyasha. (To Yepikhodov.) If you’re not playing billiards and breaking the cue, you’re lounging around the drawing-room like a guest.

YEPIKHODOV. To take me to task, if I may venture the expression, you can’t.

VARYA. I’m not taking you to task, I’m just telling you. But you know all you do is walk around instead of attending to business. We keep a bookkeeper but nobody knows what for.

YEPIKHODOV (offended). Whether I work or whether I walk or whether I eat or whether I play billiards may be criticized only by my elders and betters who know what they’re talking about.

VARYA. How dare you say such things to me! (Flying into a rage.) How dare you? You mean I don’t know what I’m talking about? Get out of here! This minute!

YEPIKHODOV (alarmed). Please express yourself in a more refined manner.

VARYA (beside herself). This very minute, out of here! Out! (He goes to the door, she follows him.) Tons of Trouble! Don’t draw another breath here! Don’t let me set eyes on you!

YEPIKHODOV has gone, behind the door his voice: “I’m going to complain about you.”

So, you’re coming back? (Seizes the stick Firs left near the door.) Come on . . . come on . . . come on, I’ll show you . . . Well, are you coming? Are you coming? Here’s what you get . . . (Swings the stick.)

At the same moment, LOPAKHIN enters.

LOPAKHIN. My humble thanks.

VARYA (angrily and sarcastically). Sorry!

LOPAKHIN. Never mind, ma’am. Thank you kindly for the pleasant surprise.

VARYA. Don’t mention it. (Starts out, then looks back and asks gently.) I didn’t hurt you?

LOPAKHIN. No, it’s nothing. The bump is going to be enormous, though.

Voices in the ballroom: “Lopakhin’s here, Yermolay Alekseich!”

PISHCHIK. Sights to be seen, sounds to be heard . . . (He and LOPAKHIN exchange kisses.) There’s cognac on your breath, my dear boy, apple of my eye. But we were making merry here too.

Enter LYUBOV ANDREEVNA.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Is that you, Yermolay Alekseich? Why the delay? Where’s Leonid?

LOPAKHIN. Leonid Andreich came back with me, he’s on his way . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (agitated). Well, what? Was there an auction? Say something!

LOPAKHIN (embarrassed, afraid to reveal his glee). The auction was over by four o’clock . . . We missed the train, had to wait till half-past nine. (Sighs heavily.) Oof! My head’s a little woozy . . .

Enter GAEV; his right hand is holding packages, his left is wiping away tears.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Lyonya, what? Well, Lyonya? (Impatiently, tearfully.) Hurry up, for God’s sake . . .

GAEV (not answering her, only waves his hand to Firs, weeping). Here, take this . . . There’s anchovies, smoked herring . . . I haven’t had a thing to eat all day . . . What I’ve been through!

The door to the billiard room opens. We hear the click of the balls and YASHA’s voice: “Seven and eighteen!” GAEV’s expression alters, he stops crying.

I’m awfully tired. Firs, help me change. (Exits through the ballroom, followed by FIRS.)

PISHCHIK. What about the auction? Tell us!

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Is the cherry orchard sold?

LOPAKHIN. Sold.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Who bought it?

LOPAKHIN. I bought it.

Pause. LYUBOV ANDREEVNA is overcome; she would fall, were she not standing beside an armchair and a table. VARYA removes the keys from her belt, throws them on the floor in the middle of the drawing room and exits.

LOPAKHIN. I bought it! Wait, ladies and gentlemen, do me a favor, my head’s swimming, I can’t talk . . . (Laughs.) We got to the auction, Derig-anov’s there already. Leonid Andreich only had fifteen thousand, and right off Deriganov bid thirty over and above the mortgage. I get the picture, I pitched into him, bid forty. He forty-five, I fifty-five. I mean, he kept upping it by fives, I by tens . . . Well, it ended. Over and above the mortgage I bid ninety thousand, it was knocked down to me. Now the cherry orchard’s mine. Mine! (Chuckling.) My God, Lord, the cherry orchard’s mine! Tell me I’m drunk, out of my mind, that I’m making it all up . . . (Stamps his feet.) Don’t laugh at me! If only my father and grandfather could rise up from their graves and see all that’s happened, how their Yermolay, beaten, barely literate Yermolay, who used to run around barefoot in the wintertime; how this same Yermolay bought the estate, the most beautiful thing in the world. I bought the estate where my grandfather and father were slaves, where they weren’t even allowed in the kitchen. I’m dreaming, it’s a hallucination, it only looks this way . . . This is a figment of your imagination, veiled by shadows of obscurity . . .⁶³ (Picks up the keys, smiles gently.) She threw down the keys, she wants to show that she’s no longer in charge here . . . (Jingles the keys.) Well, it doesn’t matter.

We hear the orchestra tuning up.

Hey, musicians, play, I want to hear you! Come on, everybody, see how Yermolay Lopakhin will swing an axe in the cherry orchard, how the trees’ll come tumbling to the ground! We’ll build cottages, and our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will see a new life here . . . Music, play!

The music plays, LYUBOV ANDREEVNA has sunk into a chair, crying bitterly.

(Reproachfully.) Why, oh, why didn’t you listen to me? My poor, dear lady, you can’t undo it now. (Tearfully.) Oh, if only this were all over quickly, if somehow our ungainly, unhappy life could be changed quickly.

PISHCHIK (takes him by the arm; in an undertone). She’s crying. Let’s go into the ballroom, leave her alone . . . Let’s go . . . (Drags him by the arm and leads him into the ballroom.)

LOPAKHIN. So what? Music, play in tune! Let everything be the way I want it! (Ironically.) Here comes the new landlord, the owner of the cherry orchard! (He accidentally bumps into a small table and almost knocks over the candelabrum.) I can pay for everything!

Exits with PISHCHIK.

No one is left in the ballroom or drawing-room except LYUBOV ANDREEVNA, who is sitting, all hunched up, weeping bitterly. The music is playing softly. ANYA and TROFIMOV hurry in. ANYA goes to her mother and kneels before her. TROFIMOV remains at the entrance to the ballroom.

ANYA. Mama! . . . Mama, you’re crying? Dear, kind, good Mama, my own, my beautiful, I love you . . . I bless you. The cherry orchard’s sold, it’s gone now, that’s true, true, true, but don’t cry, Mama, you’ve still got your life ahead of you, you’ve still got your good pure heart . . . Come with me, come, dearest, let’s go away from here, let’s go! . . . We’ll plant a new orchard, more splendid than this one, you’ll see it, you’ll understand, and joy, peaceful, profound joy will sink into your heart, like the sun when night falls, and you’ll smile, Mama! Let’s go, dearest! Let’s go! . . .

Curtain

ACT FOUR

First act setting. Neither curtains on the windows nor pictures on the wall, a few sticks of furniture remain, piled up in a corner as if for sale. A feeling of emptiness. Near the door to the outside and at the back of the stage are piles of suitcases, traveling bags, etc. The door at left is open, and through it we can hear the voices of Varya and Anya. LOPAKHIN stands, waiting. YASHA is holding a tray of glasses filled with champagne. In the hallway, YEPIKHODOV is tying up a carton. Offstage, at the back, a murmur. It’s the peasants come to say good-bye. GAEV’s voice: “Thank you, friends, thank you.”

YASHA. The common folk have come to say good-bye. I’m of the opinion, Yermolay Alekseich, they’re decent enough people, but not very bright.

The murmur subsides. Enter through the hall LYUBOV ANDREEVNA and GAEV. She isn’t crying, but is pale, her face twitches, she can’t talk.

GAEV. You gave them your purse, Lyuba. You shouldn’t have! You shouldn’t have!

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. I couldn’t help it! I couldn’t help it!

They go out.

LOPAKHIN (through the door, after them). Please, I humbly beseech you! A little drink at parting! It didn’t occur to me to bring any from town, and at the station I only found one bottle. Please!

Pause.

How about it, ladies and gentlemen? Don’t you want any? (Walks away from the door.) If I’d known, I wouldn’t have bought it. Well, I won’t drink any either.

YASHA carefully sets the tray on a chair.

Drink up, Yasha, you have some.

YASHA. Greetings to those departing!⁶⁴ And happy days to the stay-at-homes! (Drinks.) This champagne isn’t the genuine article, you can take it from me.

LOPAKHIN. Eight rubles a bottle.

Pause.

It’s cold as hell in here.

YASHA. They didn’t stoke up today, it doesn’t matter, we’re leaving. (Laughs.)

LOPAKHIN. What’s that for?

YASHA. Sheer satisfaction.

LOPAKHIN. Outside it’s October, but sunny and mild, like summer. Good building weather. (Glances at his watch, at the door.) Ladies and gentlemen, remember, until the train leaves, there’s forty-six minutes in all! Which means, in twenty minutes we start for the station. Get a move on.

Enter from outdoors TROFIMOV in an overcoat.

TROFIMOV. Seems to me it’s time to go now. The horses are at the door. Where the hell are my galoshes? Disappeared. (Through the door.) Anya, my galoshes aren’t here! I can’t find them!

LOPAKHIN. And I have to be in Kharkov. I’ll go with you on the same train. I’m spending all winter in Kharkov. I’ve been hanging around here with you, I’m worn out with nothing to do. I’ve got to be doing something, I don’t even know where to put my hands; they dangle this funny way, like somebody else’s.

TROFIMOV. We’ll be going soon, and you can return to your productive labors.

LOPAKHIN. Do have a little drink.

TROFIMOV. None for me.

LOPAKHIN. In other words, back to Moscow now?

TROFIMOV. Yes, I’ll go with them as far as town, but tomorrow back to Moscow.

LOPAKHIN. Yes . . . Hey, the professors are on a lecture strike, I’ll bet they’re waiting for you to show up!

TROFIMOV. None of your business.

LOPAKHIN. How many years have you been studying at the University?

TROFIMOV. Think up something fresher. That’s old and stale. (Looks for his galoshes.) You know, it’s unlikely we’ll ever meet again, so let me give you a piece of advice as a farewell: don’t wave your arms! Break yourself of that habit—arm-waving. And cottage-building as well, figuring that vacationers will eventually turn into property owners, figuring that way is just the same as arm-waving . . . Anyhow, I can’t help liking you. You’ve got delicate, gentle fingers, like an artist, you’ve got a delicate, gentle heart . . .⁶⁵

LOPAKHIN (hugs him). Good-bye, my boy. Thanks for everything. If you need it, borrow some money from me for the trip.

TROFIMOV. What for? Don’t need it.

LOPAKHIN. But you don’t have any!

TROFIMOV. I do. Thank you. I got some for a translation. Here it is, in my pocket. (Anxiously.) But my galoshes are missing!

VARYA (from the next room). Take your nasty things! (She flings a pair of rubber galoshes on stage.)

TROFIMOV. What are you upset about, Varya? Hm . . . But these aren’t my galoshes!

LOPAKHIN. Last spring I planted nearly three thousand acres of poppies, and now I’ve cleared forty thousand net. And when my poppies bloomed, it was like a picture! So look, what I’m getting at is, I cleared forty thousand, which means I offer you a loan because I can afford it. Why turn up your nose? I’m a peasant . . . plain and simple.

TROFIMOV. Your father was a peasant, mine a druggist, and it all adds up to absolutely nothing.

LOPAKHIN pulls out his wallet.

Don’t bother, don’t bother . . . Even if you gave me two hundred thousand, I wouldn’t take it. I’m a free man. And everything that you all value so highly and fondly, rich men and beggars alike, hasn’t the slightest effect on me, it’s like fluff floating in the air. I can manage without you, I can pass you by, I’m strong and proud. Humanity is moving toward the most sublime truth, the most sublime happiness possible on earth, and I’m in the front ranks!

LOPAKHIN. Will you get there?

TROFIMOV. I’ll get there.

Pause.

I’ll get there, or I’ll blaze a trail for others to get there.

We hear in the distance an axe striking a tree.

LOPAKHIN. Well, good-bye, my boy. Time to go. We turn up our noses at one another, while life keeps slipping by. When I work a long time nonstop, then my thoughts are clearer, and I even seem to know why I exist. But, pal, how many people there are in Russia who don’t know why they exist. Well, what’s the difference, that’s not what makes the world go round. Leonid Andreich, they say, took a job, he’ll be in the bank, six thousand a year . . . Only he won’t keep at it, too lazy . . .

ANYA (in the doorway). Mama begs you: until she’s gone, not to chop down the orchard.

TROFIMOV. I mean really, haven’t you got any tact . . . (Exits through the hall.)

LOPAKHIN. Right away, right away . . . These people, honestly! (Exits after him.)

ANYA. Did they take Firs to the hospital?

YASHA. I told them to this morning. They took him, I should think.

ANYA (to Yepikhodov, who is crossing through the room). Semyon Panteleich, please find out whether Firs was taken to the hospital.

YASHA (offended). I told Yegor this morning. Why ask a dozen times?

YEPIKHODOV. Superannuated Firs, in my conclusive opinion, is past all repairing, he should be gathered to his fathers. And I can only envy him. (Sets a suitcase on top of a cardboard hatbox and crushes it.) Well, look at that, typical. I should have known.

YASHA (scoffing). Tons of Trouble . . .

YEPIKHODOV. Well, it could have happened to anybody.⁶⁶ (Exits.)

VARYA (from behind the door). Have they sent Firs to the hospital?

ANYA. They have.

VARYA. Then why didn’t they take the letter to the doctor?

ANYA. We’ll have to send someone after them . . . (Exits.)

VARYA (from the next room). Where’s Yasha? Tell him his mother’s here, wants to say good-bye to him.

YASHA (waves his hand in dismissal). They simply try my patience.

DUNYASHA in the meantime has been fussing with the luggage; now that YASHA is alone, she comes up to him.

DUNYASHA. If only you’d take one little look at me, Yasha. You’re going away . . . you’re leaving me behind . . . (Weeps and throws herself on his neck.)

YASHA. What’s the crying for? (Drinks champagne.) In six days I’ll be in Paris again. Tomorrow we’ll board an express train and dash away, we’ll be gone in a flash. Somehow I can’t believe it. Veev lah Franz! . . . It doesn’t suit me here, I can’t live . . . nothing going on. I’ve had an eyeful of uncouth behavior—I’m fed up with it. (Drinks champagne.) What’s the crying for? Behave respectably, then you won’t have to cry.⁶⁷

DUNYASHA (powdering her nose, looks in a hand mirror). Drop me a line from Paris. I really loved you, Yasha, loved you so! I’m a soft-hearted creature, Yasha!

YASHA. Someone’s coming in here. (Fusses with the luggage, humming softly.)

Enter LYUBOV ANDREEVNA, GAEV, ANYA, and CHARLOTTA IVANOVNA.

GAEV. We should be off. Not much time left. (Looking at Yasha.) Who’s that smelling of herring?

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. In about ten minutes we ought to be getting into the carriages. (Casting a glance round the room.) Good-bye, dear old house, old grandfather. Winter will pass, spring will come again, but you won’t be here any more, they’ll tear you down. How much these walls have seen! (Kissing her daughter ardently.) My precious, you’re radiant, your eyes are sparkling like two diamonds. Are you happy? Very?

ANYA. Very! A new life is beginning, Mama!

GAEV (gaily). As a matter of fact, everything’s fine now. Before the sale of the cherry orchard, we were all upset, distressed, but then, once the matter was settled finally, irrevocably, everyone calmed down, even cheered up . . . I’m a bank employee, now I’m a financier . . . yellow to the center, and you, Lyuba, anyway, you’re looking better, that’s for sure.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Yes. My nerves are better, that’s true.

They help her on with her hat and coat.

I sleep well. Carry my things out, Yasha. It’s time. (To Anya.) My little girl, we’ll be back together soon . . . I’m off to Paris, I’ll live there on that money your great-aunt in Yaroslavl sent us to buy the estate—hurray for Auntie!— but that money won’t last long.

ANYA. Mama, you’ll come back soon, soon . . . won’t you? I’ll study, pass the finals at the high school and then I’ll work to help you. Mama, we’ll be together and read all sorts of books . . . Won’t we? (Kisses her mothers hand.) We’ll read in the autumn evenings, we’ll read lots of books, and before us a new, wonderful world will open up . . . (Dreamily.) Mama, come back . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. I’ll come back, my precious. (Embraces her daughter.)

Enter LOPAKHIN. CHARLOTTA is quietly singing a song.

GAEV. Charlotta’s happy! She’s singing!

CHARLOTTA (picks up a bundle that looks like a swaddled baby). Rock-a-bye, baby, on the tree top . . .

We hear a baby crying: “Waa! Waa!”

Hush, my sweet, my dear little boy.

“Waa! . . . Waa! . . .”

I’m so sorry for you! (Throws down the bundle.) Will you please find me a position. I can’t keep on this way.

LOPAKHIN. We’ll find one, Charlotta Ivanovna, don’t worry.

GAEV. Everyone’s dropping us, Varya’s leaving . . . we’ve suddenly become superfluous.

CHARLOTTA. There’s nowhere for me to live in town. Have to go away . . . (Hums.) What difference does it make?

Enter PISHCHIK.

LOPAKHIN. The freak of nature!

PISHCHIK (out of breath). Oy, let me catch my breath . . . I’m winded . . . my most honored . . . Give me some water . . .

GAEV. After money, I suppose? Your humble servant, deliver me from temptation . . . (Exits.)

PISHCHIK (out of breath). I haven’t been to see you for the longest time . . . loveliest of ladies . . . (To Lopakhin.) You here . . . glad to see you . . . a man of the most enormous intellect . . . take . . . go on . . . (Hands money to Lopakhin.) Four hundred rubles . . . I still owe you eight hundred and forty . . .

LOPAKHIN (bewildered, shrugs). It’s like a dream . . . Where did you get this?

PISHCHIK. Wait . . . Hot . . . Most amazing thing happened. Some Englishmen⁶⁸ stopped by my place and found on my land some kind of white clay . . . (To Lyubov Andreevna.) And four hundred for you . . . beautiful lady, divine creature . . . (Hands her money.) The rest later. (Drinks water.) Just now some young man on the train was telling about some sort of . . . great philosopher who recommends jumping off roofs . . . “Jump!” — he says, and that solves the whole problem. (Astounded.) Can you imagine! Water! . . .

LOPAKHIN. Who were these Englishmen?

PISHCHIK. I leased them the lot with the clay for twenty-four years . . . But now, excuse me, no time . . . Have to run along . . . I’m going to Znoikov’s . . . Kardamonov’s . . . I owe everybody . . . (Drinks.) Your good health . . . On Thursday I’ll drop by . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. We’re just about to move to town, and tomorrow I’ll be abroad.

PISHCHIK. What? (Agitated.) Why to town? Goodness, look at the furniture . . . the suitcases . . . well, never mind . . . (Through tears.) Never mind. Persons of the highest intelligence . . . those Englishmen . . . Never mind . . . Be happy . . . God will come to your aid . . . Never mind . . . Everything in this world comes to an end . . . (Kisses Lyubov Andreevna’s hand.) And should rumor reach you that my end has come, just remember this very thing—a horse, and say: “Once there lived an old so-and-so . . . Simeonov-Pishchik . . . rest in peace” . . . The most incredible weather . . . yes . . . (Exits, overcome with emotion, but immediately reappears in the doorway and says:) Dashenka sends you her regards! (Exits.)

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Now we can go. I’m leaving with two things on my mind. First—that Firs is ill. (Glancing at her watch.) There’s still five minutes . . .

ANYA. Mama, they’ve already sent Firs to the hospital. Yasha sent him this morning.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. My second anxiety is Varya. She’s used to rising early and working, and now, without work, she’s like a fish out of water. She’s lost weight, she’s got pale, she cries, poor soul . . .

Pause.

You know this perfectly well, Yermolay Alekseich; I had dreamt . . . of marrying her to you, yes, and it certainly looked as if you were going to get married. (Whispers to Anya, who nods to Charlotta, and both leave.) She loves you, you’re fond of her, I don’t know, I just don’t know why you seem to sidestep one another. I don’t understand!

LOPAKHIN. I don’t understand either, I admit. It’s all strange somehow . . . If there’s still time, then I’m ready right now . . . Let’s get it over with right away—and that’ll be that, but if it wasn’t for you, I have the feeling I wouldn’t be proposing.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. That’s wonderful. One little minute is all it takes. I’ll call her right now . . .

LOPAKHIN. And there’s champagne for the occasion. (Looks in the glasses.) Empty, somebody drank it already.

YASHA coughs.

I should say, lapped it up . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (lively). Fine! We’ll go outside . . . Yasha, allez!⁶⁹ I’ll call her . . . (in the doorway.) Varya, drop everything, come here. Come on! (Exits with YASHA.)

LOPAKHIN (glancing at his watch.) Yes . . .

Pause.

Behind the door a stifled laugh, whispering, finally VARYA enters.

VARYA (inspects the luggage for a long time). That’s funny, I just can’t find it. . .

LOPAKHIN. What are you looking for?

VARYA. I packed it myself and can’t remember.

Pause.

LOPAKHIN. Where are you off to now, Varvara Mikhailovna?

VARYA. Me? To the Ragulins’ . . . I’ve agreed to take charge of their household . . . as a housekeeper, sort of.

LOPAKHIN. That’s in Yashnevo? About fifty miles from here.

Pause.

So ends life in this house . . .

VARYA (examining the luggage). Where in the world is it . . . Or maybe I packed it in the trunk . . . Yes, life in this house is over . . . there won’t be any more . . .

LOPAKHIN. And I’ll be riding to Kharkov soon . . . by the same train. Lots of business. But I’m leaving Yepikhodov on the grounds . . . I hired him.

VARYA. Is that so!

LOPAKHIN. Last year by this time it was already snowing, if you remember, but now it’s mild, sunny. Except that it’s cold . . . About three degrees of frost.

VARYA. I haven’t noticed.

Pause.

And besides our thermometer is broken . . .

Pause.

Voice from outside through the door: “Yermolay Alekseich!”

LOPAKHIN (as if expecting this call for a long time). Right away! (Rushes out.)

VARYA, sitting on the floor, laying her head on a pile of dresses, quietly sobs. The door opens, LYUBOV ANDREEVNA enters cautiously.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Well?

Pause.

We’ve got to go.

VARYA (has stopped crying, wipes her eyes). Yes, it’s time, Mama dear. I’ll get to the Ragulins’ today, provided I don’t miss the train . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (in the doorway). Anya, put your things on!

Enter ANYA, then GAEV, CHARLOTTA IVANOVNA. GAEV has on a heavy overcoat with a hood. The servants and coachmen gather. YEPIKHODOV fusses around the luggage.

Now we can be on our way.

ANYA (joyously). On our way!

GAEV. My friends, my dearly beloved friends! Abandoning this house forever, can I be silent, can I refrain from expressing at parting those feelings which now fill my whole being . . .

ANYA (entreating). Uncle! . . .

VARYA. Uncle dear, you mustn’t!

GAEV (downcast). Bank the yellow to the center . . . I’ll keep still . . .

Enter TROFIMOV, then LOPAKHIN.

TROFIMOV. Well, ladies and gentlemen, time to go!

LOPAKHIN. Yepikhodov, my overcoat!

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. I’ll sit just one little minute.⁷⁰ It’s as if I never saw before what the walls in this house are like, what the ceilings are like, and now I gaze at them greedily, with such tender love . . .

GAEV. I remember when I was six, on Trinity Sunday⁷¹ I sat in this window and watched my father driving to church . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Is all the luggage loaded?

LOPAKHIN. Everything, I think. (Putting on his overcoat, to Yepikhodov.) You there, Yepikhodov, see that everything’s in order.

YEPIKHODOV (in a hoarse voice). Don’t worry, Yermolay Alekseich!

LOPAKHIN. What’s the matter with you?

YEPIKHODOV. I just drank some water, swallowed something.

YASHA (contemptuously). How uncouth . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. We’re going—and there won’t be a soul left here.

LOPAKHIN. Not until spring.

VARYA (pulls a parasol out of a bundle, looking as if she were about to hit someone).

LOPAKHIN pretends to be scared.

What are you, what are you doing . . . it never entered my mind . . .

TROFIMOV. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s get into the carriages . . . It’s high time! The train’ll be here any minute!

VARYA. Petya, here they are, your galoshes, next to the suitcase. (Tearfully.) And yours are so muddy, so old . . .

TROFIMOV (putting on his galoshes). Let’s go, ladies and gentlemen!

GAEV (overcome with emotion, afraid he’ll cry). The train . . . the station . . . Follow-shot to the center, white doublette to the corner . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Let’s go!

LOPAKHIN. Everybody here? Nobody there? (Locking the side door at the left.) Things stored here, have to lock up. Let’s go! . . .

ANYA. Good-bye, house! Good-bye, old life!

TROFIMOV. Hello, new life! (Exits with ANYA.)

VARYA casts a glance around the room and exits unhurriedly. YASHA and CHARLOTTA with her lapdog go out.

LOPAKHIN. Which means, till spring. Come along, ladies and gentlemen . . . Till we meet again! . . . (Exits.)

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA and GAEV are left alone. As if they had been waiting for this, they throw their arms around one another’s neck and sob with restraint, quietly, afraid of being heard.

GAEV (in despair). Sister dear, sister dear . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Oh, my darling, my sweet, beautiful orchard! . . . My life, my youth, my happiness, good-bye! . . . Good-bye! . . .

ANYA’s voice (gaily, appealing): “Mama!. . .”

TROFIMOVs voice (gaily, excited): “Yoo-hoo!. . .”

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. One last look at the walls, the windows . . . Our poor mother loved to walk in this room . . .

GAEV. Sister dear, sister dear! . . .

ANYA’s voice: “Mama! . . .”

TROFIMOV’s voice: “Yoo-hoo!. . .”

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. We’re coming! . . .

They go out.

The stage is empty. We hear all the doors being locked with a key, and then the carriages driving off. It grows quiet. In the stillness there is the dull thud of an axe against a tree, sounding forlorn and dismal.

We hear footsteps. From the door at right FIRS appears. He’s dressed as always, in a jacket and white waistcoat, slippers on his feet. He is ill.

FIRS (crosses to the door, tries the knob). Locked. They’ve gone . . . (Sits on the sofa.) Forgot about me . . . Never mind . . . I’ll sit here a spell . . . And Leonid Andreich, I’ll bet, didn’t put on his fur coat, went out in his topcoat . . . (Sighs, anxiously.) I didn’t see to it . . . When they’re young, they’re green! (Mutters something that cannot be understood.) This life’s gone by like I ain’t lived. (Lies down.) I’ll lie down a spell . . . Not a bit o’ strength left in you, nothing left, nothing . . . Eh you . . . half-baked bungler! . . . (Lies immobile.)

We hear the distant sound, as if from the sky, the sound of a breaking string, dying away mournfully. Silence ensues, and all we hear far away in the orchard is the thud of an axe on a tree.

Curtain

VARIANTS TO

The Cherry Orchard

Lines come from the original manuscript version (A1), a subsequent set of corrections (A2), the manuscript with the addition to Act Two (AA), and the first publication in the anthology Knowledge (Znanie) (K).

ACT ONE

page 986 / Replace: Everyone talks about our getting married . . . it’s all like a dream . . .

with: Everyone talks about our getting married, everyone offers congratulations, and he looks just as if he was about to propose any minute now, but in fact there’s nothing to it, it’s all like a dream, an unsettling, bad dream . . . Sometimes it even gets scary, I don’t know what to do with myself . . . (A2)

page 991 / Replace: I’d like to tell you . . . Here’s my plan.

with: This is what I want to say before I go. (After a glance at his watch.) Now about the estate . . . in two words . . . I want to propose to you a means of finding a way out. So that your estate doesn’t incur losses, you’d have to get up every day at four in the morning and work all day long. For you, of course, that’s impossible, I understand . . . But there is another way out. (A1)

page 994 / Replace: Nothing doing. I want to go to bed. (Exits.)

with: (walking over to the door). Who is that standing in the doorway? Who’s there? (Knock on the door from that side.) Who’s that knocking? (Knock.) That gentleman is my fiancé. (Exits.) Everyone laughs. (A1 & 2)

page 995 / After: He’s a good man. — By the way, how much do we owe him?

GAEV. For the second mortgage just a trifle — about forty thousand. (A1)

Stage direction: a peaceful mood has returned to her, she is happy. (A1 & 2)

page 1001 /

ACT TWO

Opening stage direction: YASHA and DUNYASHA are sitting on a bench, YEPIKHODOV stands nearby. From the estate along the road TROFIMOV and ANYA pass by.

ANYA. Great Aunt lives alone, she’s very rich. She doesn’t like Mamma. At first it was hard for me staying with her, she didn’t talk much to me. Then nothing, she relented. She promised to send the money, gave me and Charlotta Ivanovna something for the trip. But how awful, how hard it is to feel that one is a poor relation.

TROFIMOV. There’s somebody here already, it looks like . . . They’re sitting down. In that case, let’s walk along a little farther.

ANYA. Three weeks I’ve been away from home. I missed it so much!

They leave. (A1 & 2)

page 1004 / After: Tasty little pickle! — Pause. (A2, AA)

page 1004 / After: a girl who misbehaves . . . — (Sings quietly, and because he has no ear, extremely off-key) “Would you know my soul’s unrest.” (A2)

page 1004 / After: The masters . . . — (Rapidly.) Come here today when it gets dark. Be sure to come . . . (A1 & 2)

page 1006 / After: Maybe we’ll think of something. —

VARYA and CHARLOTTA IVANOVNA pass by on the road from the estate. CHARLOTTA is in a man’s cap with a gun.

VARYA. She’s an intelligent, well-bred girl, nothing can happen, but all the same it’s not right to leave her alone with a young man. Supper’s at nine, Charlotta Ivanovna.

CHARLOTTA. I don’t want to eat. (Quietly hums a ditty.)

VARYA. It doesn’t matter. You have to for decency’s sake. There, you see, they’re sitting there on the riverbank . . .

VARYA and CHARLOTTA leave. (A1 & 2)

page 1008 / After: (Inspects him.) — Today should be the lightweight gray suit, but this one’s a disgrace. (A1)

page 1011 / After: ANYA (dreamily). There goes Yepikhodov . . . —

VARYA. How come he’s living with us? He only eats on the run and drinks tea all day long . . .

LOPAKHIN. And makes plans to shoot himself.

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. But I love Yepikhodov. When he talks about his troubles, it gets so funny. Don’t discharge him, Varya.

VARYA. There’s no other way, Mamma dear. We have to discharge him, the good-for-nothing. (A2)

page 1015 / Replace: TROFIMOV. Believe me, Anya, believe! . . . Curtain

with: TROFIMOV. Tsss . . . Someone’s coming. That Varya again! (Angrily.) Exasperating!

ANYA. So what? Let’s go to the river. It’s nice there . . .

TROFIMOV. Let’s go . . .

They start out.

ANYA. Soon the moon will rise.

They leave.

Enter FIRS, then CHARLOTTA IVANOVNA. FIRS, muttering, is looking for something on the ground near the bench, lights a match.

CHARLOTTA. That you, Firs? What are you up to?

FIRS (mutters). Eh, you half-baked bungler!

CHARLOTTA (sits on the bench and removes her cap). That you, Firs? What are you looking for?

FIRS. Mistress mislaid her purse.

CHARLOTTA (looking). Here’s a fan . . . And here’s a hanky . . . smells of perfume.

Pause.

Nothing else. Lyubov Andreevna is constantly mislaying things. She’s even mislaid her own life. (Quietly sings a little song.) I haven’t got a valid passport, Granddad, I don’t know how old I am, and I always feel like I’m still oh so young . . . (Puts her cap on Firs; he sits motionless.) O, I love you, my dear sir! (Laughs.) Ein, zwei, drei! (Takes the cap off Firs and puts it on herself.) When I was a little girl, my father and momma used to go from fairground to fairground, giving performances, pretty good ones. And I would be dressed as a boy and do the death-defying leap and all sorts of stunts, and so forth. And when Poppa and Momma died, a German gentlewoman took me home with her and started teaching me. Fine. I grew up, then turned into a governess. But where I’m from and who I am — I don’t know . . . Who my parents were, maybe they weren’t married . . . I don’t know. (Pulls a pickle from her pocket and eats it.) I don’t know anything.

FIRS. I was twenty or twenty-five, we’re goin’ along, me and the deacon’s son and Vasily the cook, and there’s this here man sittin’ on a stone . . . a stranger like, don’t know ‘im . . . Somehow I git skeered and clear off, and when I’m gone they up and killed him . . . There was money on him.

CHARLOTTA. Well? Weiter.

FIRS. Then, I mean, comes a trial, they start askin’ questions . . . They convict ‘em . . . And me too . . . I sit in the penal colony two years or so . . . Then nothing, they let me go . . . A long time ago this was.

Pause.

You can’t rec’llect all of it . . .

CHARLOTTA. It’s time for you to die, Granddad. (Eats the pickle.)

FIRS. Huh? (Mutters to himself.) And then, I mean, we’re all riding together, and there’s a rest stop . . . Uncle leaped out of the wagon . . . took a sack . . .and in that sack’s another sack. And he looks, and there’s something in there — jerk! jerk!

CHARLOTTA (laughs, quietly). Jerk, jerk! (Eats the pickle.)

We hear someone quickly walking along the road, playing a balalaika . . . The moon comes up . . . Somewhere near the poplars VARYA is looking for Anya and calling, “Anya! Where are you!”

Curtain (Al & 2)

ACT THREE

page 1019 / After: “liking you very much, too.”

How are you?

Voice: “O, when I seen you, my heart got very sore.” (A)

page 1019 / After: Guter Mensch, aber schlechter Musikant. —

PISHCHIK. Well, I don’t understand your schlechter-mechter. Lyubov Andreevna will favor me today with a loan of one hundred eighty rubles . that I do understand . . .

LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. What sort of money do I have? Leave off. (A)

page 1019 / After: Here is a very nice rug. — there are no moth-holes in it, no little stain. Very nice. (A)

page 1026 / After: in a gray top hat — in a tailcoat (A)

page 1026 / After: to powder her nose — tries to do it without being noticed (A)

page 1026 / After: my heart pound, Firs Nikolaevich — We’ve been drinking cognac, (A)

page 1027 / After: This very minute, out of here! Out! — Out! You riffraff! (A)

page 1029 / After: Don’t laugh at me! — There’s no need, no need, no need! (A)

ACT FOUR

page 1036 / After: but that money won’t last long. — Well, Uncle got a job at the bank . . . (A)

page 1038 / After: twenty-four years . . . — (Astounded.) Can you imagine! (A)

page 1041 / After: fill my whole being . . . — My friends, you, who feel this as keenly as I do, who know . . . (A)

page 1041 / After: I’ll sit just one little minute — I’ll sit a while . . . This feels good, it feels grand . . . (A)

NOTES

1 According to Stanislavsky, Chekhov wavered between the pronunciations Vishnevy sad (accentuated on the first syllable, “an orchard of cherries”) and Vishnyovy sad (accentuated on the second syllable, “a cherry orchard”). He decided on the latter. “The former is a market garden, a plantation of cherry-trees, a profitable orchard which still had value. But the latter offers no profit, it does nothing but preserve within itself and its snow-white blossoms the poetry of the life of the masters of olden times” (My Life in Art).

2 This subtitle was used in the Marks edition of 1904. On the posters and publicity the play was denominated a drama.

3 To a Russian ear, certain associations can be made with the names. Lyubov means love, and a kind of indiscriminate love characterizes Ranevskaya. Gaev suggests gaer, buffoon, while Lopakhin may be derived from either lopata, shovel, or lopat, to shovel food down one’s gullet—both earthysounding. Simeonov-Pishchik combines an ancient autocratic name with a silly one reminiscent of pishchat, to chirp, something like De Montfort-Tweet. A pishchik is a “swozzle,” or pipe, used by puppeteers to produce the voice of Petrushka, the Russian Punch.

4 He is named for the Orthodox Saint Thyrsus (martyred 251).

5 “It’s an old manor house: once the life in it was very opulent, and this must be felt in the furnishings. Opulent and comfortable” (Chekhov to Olga Knipper, October 14, 1903). “The house in the play has two stories, is big. After all, in Act Three, there’s talk about ‘down the stairs’ ” (to Stanislavsky, November 5, 1903). Stanislavsky decided that the estate was located in the Oryol province near Kursk, possibly because the area is rich in potter’s clay and would justify the Englishmen in Act Four finding “some sort of white clay” on Pishchik’s land.

6 In an earlier version, the boy’s age was five or six. At that time Chekhov still saw Ranevskaya as an old woman. He reduced her age when it became clear that Olga Knipper would play the part.

7 Literally, “with a pig’s snout in White-Bread Row,” the street in any city market where fine baked goods are sold.

8 “Lopakhin must be not be played as a loudmouth, that isn’t the invariable sign of a merchant. He’s a suave man” (Chekhov to Olga Knipper, October 30, 1903). “Lopakhin is a merchant, true; but a very decent person in every respect; he must behave with perfect decorum, like an educated man with no petty ways or tricks . . . In casting an actor in the part, you must remember that Varya, a serious and religious young girl, is in love with Lopakhin: she wouldn’t be in love with some little moneygrubber . . .” (Chekhov to Stanislavsky, October 30, 1903). “Lopakhin—a white waistcoat and yellow high-button shoes; walks swinging his arms, a broad stride, thinks while walking, walks a straight line. Hair not short, and therefore often tosses back his head, while in thought he combs his beard, back to front, i.e., from his neck toward his mouth” (Chekhov to Nemirovich- Danchenko, November 2, 1903).

According to L. M. Leonidov,

[Chekhov] told me that Lopakhin outwardly should either be like a merchant or like a medical professor at Moscow University. And later, at the rehearsals, after Act Three he said to me:

“Listen, Lopakhin doesn’t shout. He is rich, and rich men never shout.” . . .

When I inquired of Chekhov how to play Lopakhin, he replied: “In yellow high-button shoes.”

(“Past and Present,” Moscow Art Theatre Yearbook for 1944, vol. 1 [1946])

9 A parody of the self-made man represented by Lopakhin. Chekhov first envisaged the character as plump and elderly, but revised this to fit one of his favorite actors, Ivan Moskvin, who was young and trim. The character had several originals. Yepikhodov’s autodidacticism, reading abstruse books to better his mind, originated when Chekhov suggested to one of his attendants in Yalta that he go in for self-improvement. So the man went out, bought a red tie, and announced his intention of learning French. Yepikhodov’s clumsiness derives from a conjuring clown Chekhov saw perform at the Hermitage gardens. The act consisted of disasters: juggled eggs smashing on the clown’s forehead, dishes crashing to the ground, while the woebegone wizard stood with an expression of bewilderment and embarrassment. Chekhov kept shouting, “Wonderful! It’s wonderful!” (Stanislavsky, Teatralnaya gazeta, November 27, 1914).

10 See The Bear, note 6.

11 “Dunya and Yepikhodov stand in Lopakhin’s presence, they do not sit. Lopakhin, after all, deports himself freely, like a lord, uses the familiar form in speaking to the housemaid, whereas she uses the formal form to him” (Chekhov to Stanislavsky, November 10, 1903).

12 Literally, Dvadtsat-dva neschastye, Twenty-two Misfortunes, “twenty-two” being a number indicating “lots.” Neschastye is a recurrent word throughout the play.

13 “No, I never wanted to suggest that Ranevskaya is chastened. The only thing that can chasten a woman like that is death . . . It isn’t hard to play Ranevskaya; you only need from the beginning to take the right tone; you need to come up with a smile and a way of laughing, you have to know how to dress” (Chekhov to Olga Knipper, October 25, 1903).

14 “Anya [is] a bobtailed, uninteresting role. Varya [ . . .] is a little nun, a little silly” (Chekhov to Nemirovich-Danchenko, October 30, 1903). “Anya can be played by anybody you like, even by an altogether unknown actress, only she must be young and look like a little girl, and talk in a young, ringing voice. This is not one of the major roles. Varya is a more important role . . . Varya does not resemble Sonya and Natasha; she is a figure in a black dress, a little nun, a little silly, a crybaby, etc., etc.” (Chekhov to Nemirovich-Danchenko, November 2 , 1903).

15 “Charlotta is a major role . . . Charlotta speaks correct, not broken, Russian, but occasionally she pronounces the soft ending of a word hard, and she confuses the masculine and feminine gender of adjectives” (Chekhov to Nemirovich-Danchenko, November 2, 1903).

“Muratova, who played Charlotta, asks Anton Pavlovich, might she wear a green necktie.

“‘ You may but it’s not necessary,’ the author answers” (L. M. Leonidov, “Past and Present,” Moscow Art Theatre Yearbook for 1944, vol. 1 [1946]).

The character was based on an eccentric English governess, whom Chekhov had met while staying on Stanislavsky’s estate. This acrobatic Miss Prism would leap up on Chekhov’s shoulders and salute passersby by taking off his hat and forcing him to bow (My Life in Art, Russian ed.).

16 “Pishchik is a real Russian, an old man, debilitated by gout, old age, and over-indulgence, stout, dressed in a tight, long-waisted frockcoat . . . , boots without heels” (Chekhov to Nemirovich- Danchenko, November 2, 1903).

17 Or Menton, a resort area on the Mediterranean coast of France. Nearby lies Monte Carlo, another suggestion of Ranevskaya’s extravagance.

18 Becoming a bogomolets, or pilgrim, was a common avocation in pre-Revolutionary Russia, especially for the rootless and outcast. One would trek from shrine to shrine, putting up at monasteries and living off alms. Varya’s picture of such a life is highly idealized. Its picaresque side can be glimpsed in Nikolay Leskov’s stories, such as “The Enchanted Pilgrim,” in the ambiguous figure Luka in Gorky’s 1902 play The Lower Depths, and in Chekhov’s Along the Highway.

19 Nedotyopa was not a Russian word when Chekhov used it; it was Ukrainian for an incompetent, a mental defective. Chekhov may have remembered hearing it in his childhood; it does not appear in Russian dictionaries until 1938, and then Chekhov is cited as the source. George Calderon perceived the etymology to derive from ne, not, and dotyapat, to finish chopping, which makes great sense in the context of the play. Translators grow gray over the word: earlier English versions have “good-for-nothing,” “rogue,” “duffer,” “job-lot,” “lummox,” “silly young cuckoo,” “silly old nothing,” “nincompoop,” “muddler,” “silly galoot,” “numbskull,” “young flibbertigibbet.” The critic Batyushkov considered the whole play to be a variation on the theme of “nedotyopery,” each of the characters representing a different aspect of life unfulfilled.

20 Pishchik’s costume makes him look more traditionally Russian than the others: the long coat and baggy pants tucked into boots are modern adaptations of medieval boyar dress.

21 In pre-Revolutionary Russia, billiards was played with five balls, one of them yellow. A doublette occurs when a player’s ball hits the cushion, rebounds, and sinks the other player’s ball. George Calderon ventured that Gaev “always plays a declaration game at billiards, no flukes allowed.” Chekhov asked the actor he wanted to play Gaev to brush up on the terminology and add the proper phrases in rehearsal. “Ask Vishnevsky to listen in on people playing billiards and jot down as many billiard terms as he can. I don’t play billiards, or did once, but now I’ve forgotten it all, and stick them in my play any old way. Later on Vishnevsky and I will talk it over, and I’ll write in what’s needed” (Chekhov to Olga Knipper, October 14, 1903).

22 The colloquial “Kogo” (literally, “Whom?”) instead of “chego” (“What’s that?”), the quirky locution of an aristocrat.

23 Patchouli, an oil made from an Asian plant, which has a very powerful aroma, prized in the Orient, but insufferable to many Westerners.

24 Nenaglyadnaya ditsyusya moya, literally, “blindingly beauteous bairn of mine,” a formula found in fairy tales.

25 The rest of the folksong verse goes “lost my heart head over heels.” It means “Going the whole hog.”

26 Kulak, literally a fist, but figuratively a tight-fisted peasant or small dealer.

27 Chekhov’s close friend, the writer Ivan Bunin, objected to this feature of the play. “I grew up in just such an impoverished ‘nest of gentry,’” he wrote. “It was a desolate estate on the steppes, but with a large orchard, not cherry, of course, for, Chekhov to the contrary, nowhere in Russia were there orchards comprised exclusively of cherries; only sections of the orchards on these estates (though sometimes very vast sections) grew cherries, and nowhere, Chekhov to the contrary again, could these sections be directly beside the main house, nor was there anything wonderful about the cherry trees, which are quite unattractive, as everyone knows, gnarled with puny leaves, puny blossoms when in bloom (quite unlike those which blossom so enormously and lushly right under the very windows of the main house at the Art Theatre) . . .” (O Chekhove [New York, 1955], pp. 215–216).

28 Chekhov is making fun of the Russian mania for celebrating anniversaries. Stanislavsky reports that on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Chekhov’s literary career, held during the third performance of The Cherry Orchard, “One of the men of letters began his speech of tribute with the same words that Gaev addresses to the old cupboard in Act One of The Cherry Orchard, ‘Dear, venerated.’ Only instead of cupboard, the orator said ‘Anton Pavlovich.’ Chekhov winked at me and smiled a wicked smile” (Letters).

29 Instead of Do svidaniya, “Be seeing you,” Lopakhin facetiously says Do svidantsiya.

30 By 1903, almost one-half of all private land in Russia (excluding peasant land) was mortgaged, forcing the landed gentry to sell their estates and join the professional or commercial classes, as Gaev does at the end of this play.

31 “I’m worried about the second act’s lack of action and a certain sketchy quality in Trofimov, the student. After all, time and again Trofimov is being sent into exile, time and again he is being expelled from the university, but how can you express stuff like that?” (Chekhov to Olga Knipper, October 19, 1903).

32 Radical student dropouts were far from uncommon. The saying went, “It takes ten years to graduate— five in study, four in exile, and one wasted while the University is shut down.”

33 Under Alexander III, political reaction to reforms set in, the police and censorship became extremely repressive, and anti-Semitic pogroms broke out. Large-scale political reform became impossible, so that liberal intellectuals devoted themselves to local civilizing improvements in the villages, Tolstoyan passive resistance, and dabbling in “art for art’s sake.” This feeling of social and political impotence led to the torpid aimlessness common to Chekhov’s characters.

34 In the sense of an “internal passport,” an identity document carried when traveling through the Russian empire.

35 In the original, Italian, salto mortale.

36 Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862), pronounced Buckly, whose History of Civilization in England (translated into Russian in 1861) posited that skepticism was the handmaiden of progress and that religion retards the advance of civilization. His materialist approach was much appreciated by progressive Russians in the 1870s, and Chekhov had read him as a student. By the end of the century Buckle’s ideas seemed outmoded, so the reference suggests that Yepikhodov’s efforts at self-education are behind the times.

37 Literally, talmochka, or little talma, a smaller version of the garment Nina wears in the last act of The Seagull.

38 There was a railway boom in Russia in the 1890s, although, owing to bribery and corruption, the stations were often some distance from the towns, and the service was far from efficient.

39 A period when the intelligentsia formed the Narodniki, or Populists, who preached a socialist doctrine and tried to educate the peasants. They were severely repressed in 1877–1878. Decadents here refers to writers of symbolist literature. See The Seagull, note 34.

40 Alexander II emancipated the serfs in 1861.

41 A reference to Maksim Gorky’s “Proud man” in the play The Lower Depths (1902). “Hu-man Be-ing! That’s magnificent! That sounds . . . proud!” “Man is truth . . . He is the be-all and the endall. Nothing exists but man, all the rest is the work of his hands and his brain. Man is something great, proud, man is.”

42 Literally, “they address the servant girl with the familiar form of ‘you,’ ” as Lopakhin does Dunyasha. It is typical of Trofimov’s intellectual astigmatism that he demands token respect for the servant class but cannot foresee doing away with it entirely.

43 The line beginning “Anyone can see” and ending “moral pollution” was deleted by Chekhov to accommodate the censor, and restored only in 1917. It was replaced by a line reading, “the vast majority of us, ninety-nine percent, live like savages, at the least provocation swearing and punching one another in the mouth, eating nauseating food, sleeping in mud and foul air.”

44 Aziatchina, a pre-Revolutionary term of abuse, referring to negative qualities in the Russian character such as laziness and inefficiency.

45 According to the literary critic Batyushkov, Chekhov put great stock in this sound. The author told him that Stanislavsky, not yet having read the play, asked him about the sound effects it ought to have. “‘In one of the acts I have an offstage sound, a complicated kind of sound which cannot be described in a few words, but it is very important that this sound be exactly the way I want it.’ . . . ‘Is the sound really that important?’ I asked. Anton Pavlovich looked at me sternly and said, ‘It is.’ ”

46 This was a sound Chekhov remembered hearing as a boy. In his story “Happiness,” he uses it ironically as a spectral laugh, presaging disappointment.

47 Under the terms of the Emancipation Act, field peasants were allotted land but had to pay back the government in annual installments the sum used to indemnify former landowners. House serfs, on the other hand, were allotted no land. Both these conditions caused tremendous hardship and were responsible for great unrest among the newly manumitted.

48 The Vagrant quotes from a popular and populist poem of 1881 by Semyon Yakovlevich Nadson (1862–1887) and from Nekrasov’s “Reflections at the Main Gate” (1858). The laments are supposed to come from barge haulers along the Volga. Quoting Nekrasov is always a sign of insincerity in Chekhov.

49 In Russian, Lopakin’s remark is very awkwardly phrased.

50 Okhmeliya, from okhmelyat, to get drunk, instead of Ophelia.

51 Lopakhin is misquoting Hamlet, “Nymph, in thy orisons, be all my sins remember’d” (Act III, scene 1).

52 The line beginning “They owned living souls” and ending “your front hall” was deleted by Chekhov to accommodate the censor and restored only in 1917. It was replaced with this line: “Oh, it’s dreadful, your orchard is terrifying. At evening or at night when you walk through the orchard, the old bark on the trees begins to glow and it seems as if the cherry trees are dreaming of what went on one or two hundred years ago, and painful nightmares make them droop. Why talk about it?”

53 Figures in a quadrille: Promenade à une paire!: Promenade with your partner! Grand-rond, balançez!: reel around, swing your arms! Les cavaliers à genoux et remerciez vos dames!: Gentlemen, on your knees and salute your ladies!

54 “To one of his chariot-steeds named Incitatus . . . besides a stable all-built of marble stone for him, and a manger made of ivory, over and above his caparison also and harness of purple . . . he allowed a house and family of servants, yea, and household stuff to furnish the same. . . . It is reported, moreover, that he meant to prefer him into a consulship” (Suetonius, History of Twelve Caesars, trans. Philemon Holland [1606]).

55 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900), whose philosophy encourages a new “master” morality for supermen and instigates revolt against the conventional constraints of Western civilization in his Morgenröthe. Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurtheile (Dawns. Reflections on moral prejudices, 1881). This recalls Chekhov’s statement in a letter (February 25, 1895): “I should like to meet a philosopher like Nietzsche somewhere on a train or a steamer, and spend the whole night talking to him. I don’t think his philosophy will last very long, though. It’s more sensational than persuasive.”

56 A lively Caucasian dance in two-four time, popularized by Glinka and by Rubinstein in his opera The Demon.

57 German: one, two, three.

58 In the Russian, Charlotta confuses her genders, using the masculine singular instead of the feminine plural.

59 German: A good man, but a bad musician. A catchphrase from the comedy Ponce de Leon by Clemens von Brentano (1804), meaning an incompetent, another version of nedotyopa.

60 Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817–1875), Russian poet; his fustian ballad “Greshnitsa” (1858) was frequently recited at public gatherings, and even inspired a painting. It is about a Magdalen and her repentance at a feast in Judaea under the influence of Christ. Chekhov, who had a low opinion of Tolstoy’s poetry, cites it in his stories to ironic effect. The title refers back to Ranevskaya’s catalogue of sins in Act Two. The opening lines of the poem also comment by contrast on the dowdiness of her ball:

The people seethe; joy, laughter flash

The lute is twanged, the cymbals clash.

Fern fronds and flowers are strewn about,

And ’twixt the columns in th’arcade

In heavy folds the rich brocade

With ribbon broderie is decked out . . .

61 The treatment is to soak the wax in water, and then drink the water.

62 Title and opening line of a ballad by N. S. Rzhevskaya (1869).

63 George Calderon states that this is “a cant jocular phrase, a literary tag. Lopakhin is quoting out of some bad play, as usual when he is lively.” Chekhov uses it in his correspondence.

64 Yasha is distorting a phrase usually applied to welcome arrivals.

65 These lines did not exist in the first version of the play but were added to support Chekhov’s view of Lopakhin as a decent person.

66 This line does not appear in any of the printed editions but was improvised in performance by Ivan Moskvin. It got a laugh, and he asked if he could keep it in. “Tell Moskvin he can insert the new lines, and I will put them in myself when I read the corrected proofs. I give him the most complete carte blanche” (Chekhov to Olga Knipper, March 20, 1904). Somehow, Chekhov never did insert the line in the proofs, but it appears penciled in to the Moscow Art Theatre prompt script.

67 Another echo of Hamlet to Ophelia: “If you are honest and fair, your honesty could admit no props to your fairness” (Act II, scene 1).

68 The British often appear in nineteenth-century Russian fiction as progressive and enterprising businessmen. They were often hired as estate managers, land surveyors, or experts in animal husbandry. The uncle of the writer Nikolay Leskov was a Scotsman who managed several vast Russian estates for their aristocratic owners.

69 French: go on!

70 Sitting down for a brief while before leaving for a journey was an old Russian custom.

71 Pentecost or Whitsunday, always the Sunday that is closest to fifty days from Russian Easter.