The Portable Chekhov

In the drnwing room were his four daughters, young, pretty girl9, all in gray dresses and with their hair done in the same style, and their cousin, also young and at- tractive, with her children. Starchenko, who was al- ready acquainted with them, at once began begging them to sing something, and two of the young ladies kept on declaring that they could not sing and had no music; then the cousin sat down at the piano and with quavering voices they sang a duet from "The Queen of Spades." Again "Un petit verre de Clicquot" was played, and the children danced about, stamping their feet in time. And Starchenko pranced about, too. Every- body laughed.

Then the children said good night and went off to bed. The magistrate laughed, danced a quadrille, paid court to the ladies, and kept wondering whether it were not all a dream. The wretched room at the village head- quarters, the pile of hay in the corner, the rustle of the cockroaches, the disgusting, poverty-stricken setting, the voices of the inquest witnesses, the wind, the bliz- zard, the danger of getting lost; and suddenly these magnificent, bright rooms, the sound of the piano, the beautiful girls, the curly-headed children, the gay, happy laughter—such a transformation seemed to Ihim like what happens in a fairy tale, and it seemed incredible that such transformati.ons were possible within a distance of two miles in the course of a single hour. And dismal thoughts prevented him from enjoying himself, and he kept thinking that all about him was not life but scraps of life, fragments, that everything here was accidental, that one could draw no conclusion from it; and he even felt sorry for these girls, who were living and would die here in the wilds, in the provinces, far away from civili- zation where nothing is accidental, but everything is rational and governed by law, and where, for example, every suicide is intelligible, and it is possible to explain its why and wherefore and its significance in the general scheme of things. It occurred to him that since the life about him here in the wilds was unintelligible to him, and since he did not see it, it meant that it was non- existent.

At supper the talk was of Lesnitzky.

"He left a wife and child," said Starchenko. "I would forbid marriage to neurasthenics and people with a deranged nervous system, I would deprive them of the right and the capacity to have offspring. To bring neurasthenic children into the world is a crime."

"The unfortunate young man," said von Taunitz, sigh- ing gently and shaking his head. "How much thinking you must do, how much suffering you must go through before you decide to take your own life—a young life! A misfortune like that can happen in any family, and that's terrible. It's hard to bear it, intolerable."

All the girls listened silently, with grave faces, look- ing at their father. On his part, Lyzhin felt that he ought to say something, but he couldn't think of anything, and merely observed:

"Yes, suicide is an undesirable phenomenon." He slept in a warm room, in a soft bed, covered with a blanket, under which was a fine clean sheet, but for some reason did not feel comfortable; perhaps it was because the doctor and von Taunitz were talking for a long time in the next room, and overhead, in the attic and in the chimney, the wind was roaring just as it did at the village headquarters and howling as plaintively: Hoo-oo-oo-oo!

Von Taunitz's wife had died two years previously, and he had not yet reconciled himself to the fact, and no matter what he talked about, he always referred to his wife; and there was nothing about him to suggest the public prosecutor any more.

"Is it possible that I may get into such a state some day?" thought Lyzhin, as he was falling asleep and as he listened through the wall to his host's subdued and, as it were, orphaned voice.

The magistrates sleep was restless. He was hot and uncomfortable, and he dreamed that he was not at von

Taunitz's, not in the soft clean bed, but stiU at the vil- lage headquarters, lying on the hay, and hearing the low voices of the witnesses; he imagined that Lesnitzky was near by, fifteen paces away. In his dream he re- called how the insurance agent, black-haired, pale, wearing high, dusty boots, had approached the book- keeper's counter. "This is our insurance agent—" Then he dreamed that Lesnitzky and Loshadin the policeman were walking through the open country in the snow, side by side, supporting each other; the blizzard was eddying above them, and the wind was blowing at their backs, but they walked on, chanting, "We go on, go on, go on. . . .

The old man looked like a magician in an opera, and indeed both of them looked as though they were per- forming in a theater:

"We go on, go on, go on! You are where it is warm and bright and cozy, but we go on in the cold, in the storm, through deep snow. We know nothing of rest, we know nothing of joy. We carry the whole burden of this life, of ours and yours. Hoo-oo-oo! We go on, go on, go on . . ."

Lyzhin woke and sat up in bed. What a muddled, bad dream! And why did he couple the policeman and the agent in his dream? What nonsense! And now, as Lyzhin sat up in bed, clasping his head in his hands, his heart beating wildly, it seemed that indeed the lives of the policeman and the insurance agent had something in common. Didn't they go through life side by side, holding on to one another? Some tie, invisible yet sig- nificant and essential, existed between the two of them, even between them and von Taunitz, and among all, all; in this life, even in these wilds, nothing is accidental, everything is filled with one common idea, everything has one soul, one aim, and to understand it, it is not enough to think, to reason, perhaps one must also have the gift of insight into life, a gift vvhich evidently is not vouchsafed to all. And the unhappy "neurasthenic"—as the doctor called him—who had broken down and killed himself, as well as the old peasant who spent his whole life trotting from one man to another every day, were accidents, fragments of life, only for him who thought of his own life as accidental, but were parts of one marvelous and rational organism for one who re- garded his own life as part of that common whole, and had a penetrating insight into that fact. So Lyzhin thought, and it was a thought that he had long secretly harbored and that only now unfolded fully and dis- tinctly in his consciousness.

He lay down and began to drop off; and suddenly they were again walking along together and chanting: "We go on, go on, go on. . . . We take from life all that it holds of what is most bitter and burdensome, and we leave to you what is easy and joyous; and sitting at supper, you can discuss coldly and reasonably why we suffer and perish, and why we are not as healthy and contented as you."

What they were chanting had occurred to him before, but this thought crouched somewhere in the background behind other thoughts and flickered timidly like a dis- tant light in misty weather. And he felt that this suicide and the peasant's misery lay on his conscience, too; to be reconciled to the fact that these people, submitting to their f ate, shouldered all that was darkest and most bur- densome in life—how terrible that was! To be recon- ciled to this, and to wish for oneself a bright and active life among happy, contented people, and constantly to dream of such a life, that meant dreaming of new sui- cides of men crushed by toil and care, or of weak, for- gotten men of whom people only talk sometimes at supper with vexation or sneers, but to whom no help is offered. And again:

'We go on, go on, go on. . . ." As though someone were knocking with a little ham- mer on his temples.

He woke early in the morning with a headache, roused by a noise; in the next room von Taunitz was saying to the doctor in a loud voice:

"You can't leave now. Look at what's doing outdoors. Don't argue, but just ask the coachman: he won't drive you in such weather if you pay him a million."

"But it's only two miles," the doctor was saying in an imploring voice.

"But even if it were a quarter of a mile. If you can't, you can't. As soon as you drive out of the gates, it will be just hell, you will lose your way in a minute. I won't let you go, no matter what you say."

"By evening it's bound to quiet do^," said the peas- ant who was lighting the stove.

In the next room the doctor began talking of the severe climate that influences the Russian character, of the long winters that, restricting freedom of movement, interfere with the intellectual growth of the people; and Lyzhin heard these pronouncements with vexation, looked out of the window at the drifts that had piled up against the fence, stared at the white dust that filled all visible space, at the trees that bent despairing now to the right, now to the left, listened to the howling and the banging, and thought gloomily:

"Well, what moral can you draw from all this? It's a blizzard, and that's all there is to it . . ."

They lunched at noon, then wandered aimlessly about the house; they stood at the windows.

"And Lesnitzky is lying there," thought Lyzhin, as he watched the snow eddies furiously circling above the

drifts. "Lesnitzky is lying there, and the inquest wit-

nesses are waiting—"

They spoke of the weather, remarking that the snow- storm usually lasted two days and two nights, rarely longer. At six they dined, then they played cards, sang, danced; finally they had supper. The day was over, they went to bed.

In the small hours of the morning everything quieted do^. When they got up and looked out of the windows, the naked willows with their weakly drooping branches were standing quite motionless; the sky was overcast and the air was still, as though nature were now ashamed of its orgy, its mad nights, and the free rein it had given its passions. The horses, harnessed tandem, had been waiting at the steps since five o'clock in the morning. When it was fully light the doctor and the magistrate put on their fur coats and felt boots, and tak- ing leave of their host, went out.

At the steps beside the coachman stood our police- man, Ilya Loshadin, hatless, with his old leather bag slung over his shoulder, covered with snow all over; his face was red and wet with perspiration. The footman who had gone out to help the guests into the sleigh and cover their legs, looked at him severely and said:

"What are you standing here for, you old devil? Go chase yourselfl"

"Your honor, folks are uneasy," said Loshadin, a naive smile spreading over his face, and evidently glad to see at last the men he had been waiting for so long. "Folks are very uneasy, the children are crying. They thought, your honor, as you had gone back to the town again. Show us the mercy of heaven, kind gentlemenl"

The doctor and the magistrate said nothing, got into the sleigh, and drove off to Syrnya.

In the Ravine

_T

HE village of Ukleyevo lay in a ravine, so that only the belfry and the chimneys of the cotton mills could be seen from the highroad and the railway station. When visitors asked what village this was, they were told:

"That's the village where the sexton ate all the caviar at the funeral."

It had happened at a funeral feast in the house of the manufacturer Kostukov that the old sexton saw among the savories some large-grained caviar and began eating it greedily; people nudged him, tugged at his sleeve, but he seemed petrified with enjoyment: felt nothing, and only went on eating. He ate up all the caviar, and there were some four pounds in the jar. And years had passed since then, the sexton had long been dead, but the caviar was still remembered. Whether life was so poor here or people had not been clever enough to no- tice anything but that unimportant incident that had occurred ten years before, anyway the people had noth- ing else to tell about the village of Ukleyevo.

The village was never free from fever, and the mud was thick there even in the summer, especially near the fences over which hung old willow-trees that gave deep shade. Here there was always a smell from the factory refuse and the acetic acid which was used in the manu- facture of the calico.

The three cotton mills and the tanyard were not in the village itself, but a little way off. They were small plants, and not more than four hundred workmen were employed in all of them. The tanyard often made the water in the little river stink; the refuse contaminated the meadows, the peasants' cattle suffered from anthrax, and the tanyard was ordered closed. It was considered to be closed but went on working in secret with the con- nivance of the local police officer and the district doctor, each of whom was paid ten rubles a month by the owner. In the whole village there were only two decent houses built of brick with iron roofs; one of them was occupied by the district gover^ent office, in the other, a two-storied house just opposite the church, lived Grig- ory Petrovich Tzybukin, a townsman who hailed from Yepifan.

Grigory kept a grocery, but that was only for the sake of appearances: in reality he sold vodka, cattle, hides, grain, and pigs; he traded in anything that came to hand, and when, for instance, magpies were wanted abroad for ladies' hats, he made thirty kopecks on every pair of birds; he bought timber for felling, lent money at interest, and altogether was a resourceful old man.

He had two sons. The elder, Anisim, served in the police as a detective and was rarely at home. The younger, Stepan, had gone in for trade and helped his father, but no great help was expected from him as he was weak in health and deaf; his wife Aksinya, a hand- some woman with a good figure, who wore a hat and carried a parasol on holidays, got up early and went to bed late, and ran about all day long, picking up her skirts and jingling her keys, going from the warehouse to the cellar and from there to the shop, and old Tzy- bukin looked at her good-humoredly while his eyes glowed, and at such moments he regretted she had not been married to his elder son instead of to the younger one, who was deaf, and obviously no judge of female beauty.

The old man had always had an inclination for family life, and he loved his family more than anything on earth, especially his elder son, the detective, and his daughter-in-law. Aksinya hali no sooner married the deaf son than she began to display an extraordinary gift for business, and knew who could be allowed to run up a bill and who could not; she kept the keys and would not trust them even to her husband; she rattled away at the abacus, looked at the horses' teeth like a peasant, and was always laughing or shouting; and whatever she did or said, the old man was simply delighted and mut- tered:

"Well done, daughter-in-law! Well done, my beauty!"

He had been a widower, but a year after his son's marriage he could not resist getting married himself. A girl was found for him, in a village twenty miles from Ukleyevo, Varvara Nikolaevna by name, no longer young, but good-looking, comely, and coming from a decent family. No sooner had she moved into a little room in the upper story than everything in the house seemed to brighten up as though new glass had been put into all the windows. The lamps gleamed before the icons, the tables were covered with snow-white cloths, plants with red buds made their appearance in the windows and in the front garden, and at dinner, instead of eating from a single bowl, each person had a separate plate set for him. Varvara Nikolaevna had a pleasant, friendly smile, and it seemed as though the whole hcuse were smiling too. Beggars and pilgrims, male and fe- male, began to come into the yard, a thing which had never happened in the past; the plaintive sing-song voices of the Ukleyevo peasant women and the apolo- getic coughs of weak, seedy-looking men, who had been dismissed from the factory for drunkenness were heard under the windows. Varvara helped them with money, with bread, with old clothes, and afterwards, when she felt more at home, began taking things out of the shop. One day the deaf man saw her take four ounces of tea and that disturbed him.

"Here, mother's taken four ounces of tea," he in- formed his father afterwards; "where is that to be entered?"

The old man made no reply but stood still and thought a moment, moving his eyebrows, and then went upstairs to his wife.

"Varvarushka, if you want anything out of the shop," he said affectionately, "take it, my dear. Take it and welcome; don't hesitate."

And the next day the deaf man, running across the yard, called to her:

"If there is anything you want, mother dear, help yourself."

There was something new, something gay and light- hearted in her ahns-giving, just as there was in the lamps before the icons and in the red flowers. When on the eve of a fast or during the local church festival, which lasted three days, they palmed off on the peasants tainted salt meat, smelling so strong it was hard to stand near the tub of it, and took scythes, caps, and their wives' ker- chiefs in pledge from the drunken men; when the factory hands, stupefied with bad vodka, lay rolling in the mud, and sin seemed to hover thick like a fog in the air, then it was a relief to think that up there in the house there was a gentle, neatly dressed woman who had nothing to do with salt meat or vodka; her charity had in those op- pressive, murky days the effect of a safety valve in a machine.

The days in Tzybukin's house were busy ones. Before the sun was up Aksinya was snorting as she washed in the outer room, and the samovar was boiling in the kitchen with a hum that boded no good. Old Grigory Petrovich, dressed in a long black jacket, cotton breeches and shiny top boots, looking a dapper little figure, walked about the rooms, tapping with his little heels like the father-in-law in the well-known song. The shop was opened. When it was daylight a racing droshky was brought up to the front door and the old man got jaun- tily into it, pulling his big cap down to his ears; and, looking at him, no one would have said he was fifty-six. His wife and daughter-in-law saw him off, and at such times when he had on a good, clean coat, and a huge black stallion that had cost three hundred rubles was harnessed to the droshky, the old man did not like the peasants to come up to him with their complaints and petitions; he hated the peasants and disdained them, and if he saw some peasants waiting at the gate, he would shout angrily:

"Why are you standing there? Move on." Or if it were a beggar, he would cry: "God will provide!"

He would drive off on business; his wife, in a dark dress and a black apron, tidied the rooms or helped in the kitchen. Aksinya attended to the shop, and from the yard could be heard the clink of bottles and of money, her laughter and loud talk, and the angry voices of customers whom she had offended; and at the same time it could be seen that the illicit sale of vodka was already going on in the shop. The deaf man sat in the shop, too, or walked about the street bareheaded, with his hands in his pockets looking absent-mindedly now at the houses, now at the sky overhead. Six times a day they had tea; four times a day they sat down to meals. And

in the evening they counted their takings, put them

down, went to bed, and slept soundly.

All the three cotton mills at Ukleyevo were connected by telephone with the houses of their owners—Hrymin Seniors, Hrymin Juniors, and Kostukov. A telephone was installed in the government office, too, but it soon went out of order when it started to swarm with bugs and cockroaches. The district elder was semiliterate and wrote every word in the official documents with a capital. But when the telephone went out of order he said:

"Yes, now we shall be badly off without a telephone."

The Hrymin Seniors were continually at law with the Juniors, and sometimes the Juniors quarreled among themselves and went to law, and their mill did not work for a month or two till they were reconciled again, and this was an entertainment for the people of Ukleyevo, as there was a great deal of talk and gossip on the occasion of each quarrel. On holidays Kostukov and the Juniors would go driving and they would dash about Ukleyevo and run down calves. Aksinya, dressed to kill and rus- tling her starched petticoats, used to promenade up and down the street near her shop; the Juniors would snatch her up and cany her off as though by force. Then old Tzybukin, too, would drive out to show his new horse and he would take Varvara with him.

In the evening, after these drives, when people were going to bed, an expensive concertina was played in the Juniors' yard and, if the moon was shining, those strains thrilled the heart, and Ukleyevo no longer seemed a wretched hole.

u

The elder son, Anisim, came home very rarely, only on great holidays, but he often sent by a returning vil- lager presents and letters written by someone else in a very beautiful hand, always on a sheet of foolscap that looked like a formal petition. The letters were full of expressions that Anisim never made use of in conversa- tion: "Dear papa and mamma, I send you a pound of orange pekoe tea for the satisfaction of your physical needs."

At the bottom of every letter was scratched, as though with a broken pen: "Anisim Tzybukin," and again in the same excellent hand: "Agent."

The letters were read aloud several times, and the old father, touched, red with emotion, would say:

"Here he did not care to stay at home, he has gone in for a learned profession. Well, let him go his way! Every man to his own trade!"

It happened that just before Carnival there was a heavy rain mixed with sleet; the old man and Varvara went to the window to look at it, and, lo and behold! Anisim drove up in a sledge from the station. He was quite unexpected. He came indoors, looking anxious and troubled about something, and he remained the same for the rest of his stay; there was something jaunty in his manner. He was in no haste to go away, and it looked as though he had been dismissed from the service. Varvara was pleased to see him; she kept looking at him with a sly expression, sighing, and shaking her head.

"How is this, my friends?" she said. "The lad's in his ^enty-eighth year, and he is still leading a gay bachelor life; tut, tut, tut. . . "

From the adjacent room her soft, even speech con- tinued to sound like tut, tut, tut. She began whispering with her husband and Aksinya, and their faces, too, as- sumed a sly and mysterious expression as though they were conspirators.

It was decided to marry Anisim.

"The younger brother has long been married," said Varvara, "and you are still without a helpmate like a cock at a fair. What is the meaning of it? Tut, tut, you will be married, please God, then as you choose—you can go into the service and your wife will remain here at home to help us. There is no order in your life, young man, and I see you have forgotten how to live properly. Tut, tut, all of you townspeople are sinners."

Since the Tzybukins were rich, the prettiest girls were chosen as brides for them. For Anisim, too, they found a handsome one. He was himself of an uninterest- ing and inconspicuous appearance; of a weak and sickly constitution and short stature; he had full, puffy cheeks which looked as though he were blowing them out; there was a sharp look in his unblinking eyes; his beard was red and scanty, and when he was thinking he always put it into his mouth and bit it; moreover he drank and that was noticeable from his face and his walk. But when he was informed that they had found a very beau- tiful bride for him, he said:

"Oh well, I am not a fright myself. All of us Tzybu- kins are handsome, I must say."

The village of Torguyevo was near the town. Half of it had lately been incorporated into the townwn, the other half remained a village. In the first half there was a widow living in her own little house; she had a sister living with her who was quite poor and went out to work by the day, and this sister had a daughter called Lipa, a girl who went out to work too. People in Tor- guyevo were alr«idy talking about Lipa's good looks, but her terrible poverty put everyone off; people opined that only some widower or elderly man would marry her in spite of her poverty, or would perhaps take her to him- self without marriage, and that her mother would get enough to eat living with her. Varvara heard about Lipa from the matchmakers, and she drove over to Tor- guyevo.

Then a proper visit of inspection was arranged at the house of the girl's aunt, with refreshments and wine, and Lipa wore a new pink dress made on purpose for this occasion, and a crimson ribbon like a flame gleamed in her hair. She was pale, thin, and frail, with soft, delicate features sunburnt from working in the open air; a shy, mournful smile always hovered about her face, and there was a childlike look in her eyes, trustful and curious.

She was young, still a child, her bosom still scarcely perceptible, but she could be married because she had reached the legal age. She really was beautiful, and the only thing that might be thought unattractive was her big masculine hands which hung idle now like two big claws.

"There is no dowry—but we don't mind that," said Tzybukin to the aunt. "We took a wife from a poor fam- ily for our son Stepan, too, and now we can't say too much for her. In the house and in the shop alike she has hands of gold."

Lipa stood in the doorway and looked as though she would say: "Do with me as you will, I trust you," while her mother Praskovya the charwoman hid in the kitchen numb with shyness. At one time in her youth a merchant whose floors she was scrubbing stamped at her in a rage; she went chill with terror and there always was a feeling of fear at the bottom of her heart. And that fear made her arms and legs tremble and her cheeks twitch. Sitting in the kitchen she tried to hear what the visitors were saying, and she kept crossing herself, pressing her fingers to her forehead, and gazing at the icons. Anisim, slightly drunk, would open the door into the kitchen and say in a free-and-easy way:

470 the portable chekhov

"Why are you sitting in here, precious mamma? We are dull without you."

And Praskovya, overcome with timidity, pressing her hands to her lean, wasted bosom, would say: "Oh, not at all. . . . It's very kind of you, sir." After the visit of inspection the wedding day was fixed. Then Anisim walked about the rooms at home whistling, or suddenly thinking of something, would fall to brooding and would look at the floor fixedly, silently, as though he would probe to the depths of the earth. He expressed neither pleasure that he was to be married, married so soon, the week after Easter, nor a desire to see his bride, but simply went on whistling. And it was evi- dent that he was only getting married because his father and stepmother wished him to, and because it was the village custom to marry off the son in order to have a woman to help in the house. When he went away he seemed in no haste, and behaved altogether not as he had done on previous visits; he was unusually jaunty and talked inappropriately.

In the village of Shikalova lived two dressmakers, sisters, belonging to the Flagellant sect. The new clothes for the wedding were ordered from them, and they often came to try them on, and stayed a long while drink- ing tea. They were making for Varvara a brown dress with black lace and bugles on it, and for Aksinya a light green dress with a yellow front, and a train. When the dressmakers had finished their work Tzybukin paid them not in money but in goods from the shop, and they went away depressed, carrying parcels of tallow candles and tins of sardines which they did not in the least need, and when they got out of the village into the open country they sat down on a hillock and cried.

Anisim arrived three days before the wedding, rigged out in new clothes from top to toe. He had dazzling indiarubber galoshes, and instead of a cravat wore a red cord with little balls on it, and over his shoulder he had hung an overcoat, also new, without putting his arms into the sleeves.

After crossing himself sedately before the icon, he greeted his father and gave him ten silver rubles and ten half-rubles; to Varvara he gave as much, and to Aksinya twenty quarter-rubles. The chief charm of the present lay in the fact that all the coins, as though care- fully matched, were new and glittered in the sun. Trying to seem grave and sedate he screwed up his face and puffed out his cheeks, and he smelled of spirits: he must have visited the refreshment bar at every station. And again there was something free-and-easy about the man —something superfluous and out of place. Then Anisim had a bite and drank tea with the old man, and Varvara kept turning the new coins over in her hands and in- quired about villagers who had gone to live in the to^.

"They are all right, thank God, they get on quite well," said Anisim. "Only something has happened to Ivan Yegorov: his old woman, Sofya Nikiforovna, is dead. Of consumption. They ordered the memorial dinner for the peace of her soul from the confectioner's at two and a half rubles a head. And there was wine. There were peasants from our village, and Yegorov paid two and a half rubles for them, too. They didn't eat a thing, though. What does a peasant understand about sauces!"

"Two and a half rubles!" said his father, shaking his head.

"Well, il's not like the country there. You go into a restaurant to have a snack, you order one thing and an- other, a crowd collects, you have a drink—and before you know it it is daylight and you've three or four rubles each to pay. And when you are with Samorodov he likes to have coffee with cognac in it after everything, and cognac is sixty kopecks a little glass."

"And he is making it all up," said the old man de- lightedly; "he is making it all up!"

"I am always with Samorodov now. It's Samorodov who writes my letters to you. He writes splendidly. And if I were to tell you, mamma," Anisim went on gaily, ad- dressing Varvara, "the sort of fellow that Samorodov is, you would not believe me. We call him Muhtar, because he is black like an Armenian. I can see through him, I know all his affairs as well as I know the five fingers of my hand, and he feels that, and he always follows me about, we're as thick as thieves. He seems not to like it in a way, but he can't get on without me. Where I go he goes. I have a true sharp eye, mamma. I see a peas- ant selling a shirt at the rag fair, 'Stay, that shirt was stolen.' And really it turns out it is so: the shirt was stolen."

"How can you tell?" asked Varvara.

"I just know it, I have just an eye for it. I know noth- ing about the shirt, only for some reason I seem drawn to it: it's stolen, and that's all I can say. The boys in the department have got a saying: 'Oh, Anisim has gone to shoot snipe!' That means looking for stolen goods. Yes. . . • Anybody can steal, but it is another thing to keep what you've stolen! The earth is wide, but there is no place on it to hide stolen goods."

"A ram and two ewes were carried off from the Gun- torevs' last week," said Varvara, and she heaved a sigh, "and there is no one to and find them. . . . Oh, oh, oh . . ."

'Well, I might have a try. I could do that."

The day of the wedding arrived. It was a cool but bright, cheerful April day. Since early morning people were driving about Ukleyevo in carriages drawn by teams of two or three horses, the bells jingling, and gay ribbons decorating the yokes and manes. The rooks, dis- turbed by this activity, were cawing noisily in the wil- lows, and the starlings sang their loudest unceasingly as though rejoicing that there was a wedding at the Tzy- bukins'.

Indoors the tables were already loaded with long fish, smoked hams, stuffed fowls, boxes of sprats, pickled savories of various sorts, and many bottles of vodka and wine; there was a smell of smoked sausage and of sour lobster. Old Tzybukin walked about near the tables, tapping with his heels and sharpening the knives against each other. They kept calling Varvara and asking for things, and she, breathless and distraught, was con- stantly running in and out of the kitchen, where the man cook from Kostukov's and a woman cook employed by Hrymin Juniors had been at work since early morn- ing. Aksinya, with her hair curled, in her stays without her dress on, in new creaky boots, flew about the yard like a whirlwind showing glimpses of her bare knees and bosom. It was noisy, there was a sound of scolding and oaths; passers-by stopped at the wide-open gates, and in everything there was a feeling that something extraor- dinary was happening.

"They have gone for the bride!"

The carriage bells jingled and died away far beyond the village. . . . Between two and three o'clock people ran up: again there was a jingling of bells: they were bringing the bride! The church was full, the candelabra were lighted, the choir were singing from music books as old Tzybukin had wished it. The glare of the lights and the bright-colored dresses dazzled Lipa; she felt as though the singers with their loud voices were hitting her on the head with hammers. The stays, which she had put on for the first time in her life, and her shoes pinched her, and her face looked as though she had only just come to herself after fainting; she gazed about without understanding. Anisim, in his black coat with a red cord instead of a tie, stared at the same spot lost in thought, and at every loud burst of singing hurriedly crossed himself. He felt touched and disposed to weep. This church was familiar to him from earliest childhood; at one time his dead mother used to bring him here to take the sacrament; at one time he used to sing in the choir; every icon he remembered so well, every corner. Here he was being married, he had to take a wife for the sake of doing the proper thing, but he was not think- ing of that now, he had somehow forgotten his wedding completely. Tears dimmed his eyes so that he could not see the icons, he felt heavy at heart; he prayed and be- sought God that the misfortunes that threatened him, that were ready to burst upon him tomorrow, if not to- day, might somehow pass him by as storm-clouds in time of drought pass over a village without yielding one drop of rain. And so many sins were heaped up in the past, so many sins and getting away from them or wip- ing them out was so beyond hope that it seemed incon- gruous even to ask forgiveness. But he did ask forgive- ness, and even gave a loud sob, but no one took any notice of that, since they supposed he had had a drop too much.

There was the sound of a fretful childish wail:

"Take me away from here, mamma darling!"

"Quiet there!" cried the priest.

When the young couple returned from the church people ran after them; there were crowds, too, round the shop, round the gates, and in the yard under the windows. Peasant women came to sing songs in their honor. The young couple had scarcely crossed the thresh- old when the choristers, who were already standing in the outer room with their music books, broke into a chant at the top of their voices; a band brought expressly from the town struck up. Sparkling Don wine was brought in tall glasses, and Yelizarov, a carpenter who was also a contractor, a tall, gaunt old man with eye- brows so bushy that his eyes could scarcely be seen, said, addressing the pair:

"Anisim and you, my child, love one another, lead a godly life, little children, and the Heavenly Mother will not abandon you."

He fell upon the old father's shoulder and gave a sob.

"Grigory Petrovich, let us weep, let us weep joy!" he said in a thin voice, and then at once burst out laughing and continued in a loud bass. "Ho-ho-ho! This one, too, is a fine daughter-in-law for you! Everything is in its place in her; everything runs smoothly, no creak- ing, the whole mechanism works well, lots of screws in it."

He was a native of the Yegoryev district, but had worked in the mills at Ukleyevo and in the neighbor- hood since his youth, and had made it his home. For years he had been a familiar figure, as old and gaunt and lanky as now, and for years he had had the nickname "Crutch." Perhaps because he had done nothing but repair work for forty years, he judged everybody and everything by its soundness, always asking himself if things were in need of repair. Before sitting do^ to table he tried several chairs to see whether they were solid, and he touched the smoked white-fish, too.

After the Don wine, they all sat do^ to table. The visitors talked, moving their chairs. The choristers were singing in the outer room. The band was playing, and at the same time the peasant women in the yard were singing their songs in unison, and there was an awful, wild medley of sounds which made one giddy.

Crutch fidgeted about on his chair and prodded his neighbors with his elbows, prevented people from talk- ing, and laughed and cried alternately.

"Children, children, children," he muttered rapidly. "Aksinya my ^dear, Varvara darling, let's all live in peace and harmony, my dear little hatchets . . ."

He drank little and was now drunk from only one glass of English bitters. The revolting bitters, made from nobody knows what, intoxicated everyone who drank it. stunning them as it were. Tongues began to falter.

The local clergy were present, and the clerks from the mills with their wives, tradesmen and tavern-keepers from the other villages. The clerk and the elder of the rural district who had served together for fourteen years, and who had during all that time never signed a single document for anybody or let a single person out of the office without deceiving or insulting him, were sitting now side by side, both fat and replete, and it seemed as though they were so steeped in injustice and falsehood that even the skin of their faces had a peculiar, thievish look. The clerk's wife, a thin woman with a squint, brought all her children with her, and like a bird of prey looked aslant at the plates, snatched everything she could get hold of and put it in her own or her children's pockets.

Lipa sat as though turned to stone, still with the same expression as in church. Anisim had not said a single word to her since he had made her acquaintance, so that he did not yet know the sound of her voice; and now, sitting beside her, he remained mute and went on drink- ing bitters, and when he got drunk he began talking t-o Lipa's aunt sitting opposite:

"I have a friend called Samorodov. A peculiar man. He is by rank an honorary citizen, and he can talk. But I know him through and through, auntie, and he knows it. Pray join me in drinking to Samorodov's health, aunti e!"

Varvara, worn out and distracted, walked round the table, pressing the guests to eat, and was evidently pleased that there were so many dishes and that every- thing was so lavish—no one could disparage them now. The sun set, but the dinner went on: the guests were beyond knowing what they were eating or drinking, it was impossible to distinguish what was said, and only from time to time when the band subsided some peasant woman could be heard shouting outside:

"You've sucked the blood out of us, you plunderers; a plague on youl"

In the evening they danced to the band. The Hrymin Juniors came, bringing wine of their own, and one of them, when dancing a quadrille, held a bottle in each hand and a wineglass in his mouth, and that made every- one laugh. In the middle of the quadrille they suddenly crooked their knees and danced in a squatting position; Aksinya in green flew by like a flash, raising a wind with her train. Someone trod on her flounce and Crutch shouted:

"Hey, they have torn off the baseboard! Children!" Aksinya had naive gray eyes which rarely blinked, and a naive smile played continually on her face. And in those unblinking eyes, and in that little head on the long neck, and in her slenderness there was something snakelike; aU in green, with her yellow bosom and the smile on her lips, she looked like a viper that peers out of the young rye in the spring at the passers-by, stretching itself and lifting its head. The Hrymins were free in their behavior to her, and it was very noticeable that she had long been on intimate terms with the eldest of them. But her deaf husband saw nothing, he did not look at her; he sat with his legs crossed and ate nuts, cracking them so loudly that it sounded like pistol shots.

But, behold, old Tzybukin himself walked into the middle of the room and waved his handkerchief as a sign that he, too, wanted to dance the Russian dance, and all over the house and from the crowd in the yard rose a hum of approbation:

"It's himself has stepped out! Himself!"

Varvara danced, but the old man only waved his handkerchief and kicked up his heels, but the people in the yard, propped against one another, peeping in at the windows, were in raptures, and for the moment for- gave him everything—his wealth and the wrongs he had done them.

'Well done, Grigory Petrovichl" was heard in the crowd. "Go it! You can still do itl Ha-hal"

It was kept up till late, till two o'clock in the morning. Anisim, staggering, went to take leave of the singers and musicians, and gave each of them a new half-ruble. His father, who was not staggering but treading more heavily on one leg, saw his guests off, and said to each of them:

"The wedding has cost two thousand."

As the party was breaking up, someone took the Shikalova innkeeper's good coat instead of his old one, and Anisim suddenly flew into a rage and began shouting:

"Stop, 111 find it at once; I know who stole itl Stop!"

He ran out into the street in pursuit of someone, but he was caught, brought back home, shoved, drunken, red with anger and wet, into the room where the aunt was undressing Lipa, and was locked in.

IV

Five days had passed. Anisim, who was ready to leave, went upstairs to say good-by to Varvara. All the lamps were burning before the icons, there was a smell of incense, while she sat at the window knitting a stock- ing of red wool.

"You have not stayed with us long,'' she said. "Youre bored, I suppose. Tut, tut, tut. . . . We live comfort- ably; we have plenty of everything. We celebrated your wedding properly, in good style; your father says it came to two thousand. In fact we live like merchants, only it's dreary here. We treat the people very badly. My heart aches, my dear; how we treat them, my good- ness! Whether we barter a horse or buy something or hire a laborer—it's cheating in everything. Cheating and cheating. The hempseed oil in the shop is bitter, rancid, worse than pitch. But surely, tell me pray, couldn't we sell good oil?"

"Every man to his trade, mamma."

"But you know we all have to die? Oh, oh, really you ought to talk to your father . . . !"

"Why, you should talk to him yourself."

"Well, well, I did put in a word, but he said just what you do: 'Every man to his own trade.' Do you suppose in the next world they'll consider what trade you have been put to? God's judgment is just."

"Of course, they won't consider,'' said Anisim, and he heaved a sigh. "There is no God, anyway, you know, mamma, so what considering can there be?"

Varvara looked at him with surprise, burst out laugh- ing, and struck her hands together. Perhaps because she

was so genuinely surprised at his words and looked at

him as though he were queer, he was embarrassed.

"Perhaps there is a God, only there is no faith. When I was being married I was not myself. Just as you may take an egg from under a hen and there is a chicken -chirping in it, so my conscience suddenly piped up, and while I was being married I thought all the time: 'There is a God!' But when I left the church, it was nothing. And indeed, how can I tell whether there is a God or not? We are not taught right from childhood, and while the babe is still at his mother's breast he is only taught •every man to his trade.' Father does not believe in God, either. You were saying that Guntorev had some sheep stolen. ... I have found them; it was a peasant at Shikalova stole them; he stole them, but father's got the hides . . . so that's all his faith amounts to."

Anisim winked and wagged his head.

"The elder does not believe in God, either," he went on. "Nor the clerk, nor the sexton. And as for their going to church and keeping the fasts, that is simply to prevent people talking ill of them, and in case it really may be true that there will be a Day of Judgment. Nowadays people say that the end of the world has come because people have grownwn weak, do not honor their parents, and so on. All that is a trifle. My idea, mamma, is that all our trouble is because there is so little conscience in people. I see through things, mamma, and I understand. If a man has a stolen shirt I see it. A man sits in a tavern and you fancy he is drinking tea and no more, but to me the tea is neither here nor there; I see farther, he has no conscience. You can go about the whole day and not meet one man with a conscience. And the whole reason is that they don't know whether there is a God or not. . . . Well, good-by, mamma, keep alive and well, don't remember evil against me."

Anisim bowed down at Varvara's feet.

"I thank you for everything, mamma," he said. "You are a great asset to our family. You are a very decent woman, and I am very pleased with you."

Much moved, Anisim went out, but returned again and said:

"Samorodov has got me mixed up in something: I shall either make my fortune or come to grief. If any- thing happens, then you must comfort my father, mamma."

"Oh, nonsense, don't you worry, tut, tut, tut . . • God is merciful. And Anisim, you should pet your wife a little, instead you give each other sulky looks; you might smile at least."

"Yes, she is rather a queer one," said Anisim, and he gave a sigh. "She does not understand anything, she never speaks. She is very young, let her grow up."

A tall, sleek white stallion was already standing at the front door, harnessed to the chaise.

Old Tzybukin jumped in, sat down jauntily, and took the reins. Anisim kissed Varvara, Aksinya, and his brother. On the steps Lipa, too, was standing; she was standing motionless, looking away, and it seemed as though she had not come to see him off but just by chance for some unknown reason. Anisim went up to her and just touched her cheeks with his lips.

"Good-by," he said.

And without looking at him she gave a strange smile; her face began to quiver, and everyone for some reason felt sorry for her. Anisim, too, leaped into the chaise with a bound and put his arms jauntily akimbo, for he considered himself a good-looking fellow.

When they drove up out of the ravine Anisim kept looking back towards the village! It was a warm, bright day. The cattle were being driven out for the first time, and the peasant girls and women were walking by the herd in their holiday dresses. The dun-colored bull bel- lowed, glad to be free, and pawed the ground with his forefeet. On all sides, above and below, the larks were singing. Anisim looked round at the elegant white church—it had only lately been whitewashed—and he thought how he had been praying in it five days before; he looked round at the school with its green roof, at the little river in which he used to bathe and catch fish, and there was a stir of joy in his heart, and he wished that a wall might rise up from the ground and prevent him from going farther, and that he might be left with noth- ing but the past.

At the station they went to the refreshment room and drank a glass of sherry each. His father felt in his pocket for his purse to pay.

"I will stand treat," said Anisim. The old man, touched and delighted, slapped him on the shoulder, and winked to the waiter as much as to say, "See what a fine son I have got."

"You ought to stay at home in the business, Anisim," he said; "you would be worth any price to me! I would gild you from head to foot, my son."

"It can't be done, papa."

The sherry was sour and smelled of sealing-wax, but they had another glass.

When old Tzybukin returned home from the station, at first he did not recognize his younger daughter-in- law. As soon as her husband had driven out of the yard, Lipa was transformed and suddenly brightened up. Wearing a shabby skirt with her feet bare and her sleeves tucked up to the shoulders, she was scrubbing the stairs in the entry and singing in a silvery little voice, and when she brought out a big tub of slops and looked up at the sun with her childlike smile it seemed as though she, too, were a lark.

An old laborer who was passing by the door shook his head and cleared his throat.

"Yes, indeed, your daughters-in-law, Grigory Petro- vich, are a blessing from God," he said. "Not women, but treasures!"

v

On Friday the eighth of July, Yelizarov, nicknamed Crutch, and Lipa were returning from the village of Kazanskoye, where they had been to a service on the occasion of a local church holiday in honor of the Holy Mother of Kazan. A good distance behind them walked Lipa's mother Praskovya, who always fell back, as she was ill and short of breath. It was drawing towards evening.

"A-a-a . • said Crutch, wondering as he listened to Lipa. "A-al . . . We-ell!"

"I am very fond of jam, Ilya Makarych," said Lipa. "I sit down in my little corner and drink tea and eat jam. Or I drink it with Varvara Nikolayevna, and she tells some story full of feeling. She has a lot of jam—four jars. 'Have some, Lipa,' she says, 'eat as much as you like.'"

"A-a-a, four jars!"

"They live very well. We have white bread with our tea; and meat, too, as much as one wants. They live very well, only I am frightened in their presence, Ilya Makarych. Oh, oh, how frightened I am!"

"Why are you frightened, child?" asked Crutch, and he looked back to see how far behind Praskovya was.

"At first, after the wedding, I was afraid of Anisim

Grigorich. Anisim Grigorich did nothing, he didn't ill- treat me, only when he comes near me a cold shiver runs all over me, through all my bones. And I did not sleep one night, I trembled all over and kept praying to God. And now I am afraid of Aksinya, Ilya Makarych. It's not that she does anything, she is always laughing, but sometimes she glances at the window, and her eyes are so angry and there is a greenish gleam in them— like the eyes of the sheep in the pen. The Hrymin Juniors are leading her astray: 'Your old man,' they tell her, 'has a bit of land at Butyokino, a hundred acres,' they say, 'and there is sand and water there, so you, Aksinya,' they say, 'build a brickyard there and we wiU go shares in it.' Bricks now are twenty rubles the thou- sand, it's a profitable business. Yesterday at dinner Ak- sinya said to the old man: 'I want to build a brickyard at Butyokino; I'm going into the business on my own account.' She laughed as she said it. And Grigory Petro- vich's face darkened, one could see he did not like it. 'As long as I live,' he said, 'the family must not break up, we must keep together.' She gave a look and gritted her teeth. . . . Fritters were served, she would not eat them.''

"A-a-a! . . .'' Crutch was surprised.

"And tell me, if you please, when does she sleep?" said Lipa. "She sleeps for half an hour, then jumps up and keeps walking and walking about to see whether the peasants have not set fire to something, have not stolen something. . . . She frightens me, Ilya Maka- rych. And the Hrymin Juniors did not go to bed after the wedding, but drove to the town to go to law with each other; and folks do say it is all on account of Aksinya. Two of the brothers have promised to build her a brickyard, but the third is offended, and the fac- tory has been at a standstill for a month, and my uncle

Prohor is without work and goes about from house to housc getting crusts. 'Hadn't you better go working on the land or sawing up wood, meanwhile, uncle?' I tell him; 'why disgrace yourself?' Tve got out of the way of it,' he says; 'I don't know how to do any sort of peas- ant's work now, Lipinka.' . . ."

They stopped to rest and wait for Praskovya near a copse of young aspen-trees. Yelizarov had long been a contractor in a small way, but he kept no horse, going on foot all over the district with nothing but a little bag in which there was bread and onions, and stalking along with big strides, swinging his arms. And it was difficult to walk with him.

At the entrance to the copse stood a milestone. Ye- lizarov touched it to see if it we.j firm. Praskovya reached them out of breath. Her wrinkled and always scared- looking face was beaming with happiness; she had been at church today like anyone else, then she had been to the fair and there had drunk pear cider. For her this was unusual, and it even seemed to her now that she had lived for her own pleasure that day for the first time in her life. Mter resting they all three walked on side by side. The sun had already set, and its beams filtered through the copse, gleaming on the trunks of the trees. There was a faint sound of voices ahead. The Ukleyevo girls had gone on 1ong before but had lingered in the copse, probably gathering mushrooms.

"Hey, wenches!" cried Yelizarov. "Hey, my beauties!"

There was a sound of laughter in response.

"Crutch is coming! Crutch! The old horseradish."

And the echo laughed, too. And then the copse was left behind. The tops of the factory chimneys came into view. The cross on the belfry glittered: this was the village: "the one at which the sexton ate all the caviar at the funeral." Now they were almost home; they only had to go do^ into the big ravine. Lipa and Praskovya, who had been walking barefoot, sat down on the grass to put on their shoes, Yelizarov sat do^ with them. If they looked down from above, Ukleyevo looked beau- tiful and peaceful with its wiUow-trees, its white church, and its little river, and the only blot on the picture was the roof of the factories, painted for the sake of cheap- ness a dark sullen color. On the slope on the farther side they could see the rye—some in stacks and sheaves here and there as though strewn about by the storm, and some freshly cut lying in swathes; the oats, too, were ripe and glistened now in the sun like mother-of-pearl. It was harvest-time. Today was a holiday, tomorrow they would harvest the rye and cart the hay, and then Sunday a holiday again; every day there were mutter- ings of distant thunder. It was muggy and looked like rain, and, gazing now at the fields, everyone thought, God grant we get the harvest in in time; and everyone felt at once gay and joyful and anxious at heart.

"Mowers ask a high price nowadays," said Praskovya. "One ruble and forty kopecks a day."

People kept coming from the fair at Kazanskoye: peasant women, mill hands in new caps, beggars, chil- dren. . . . A cart would drive by stirring up the dust and behind it would run an unsold horse, and it seemed glad it had not been sold; then a cow was led along by the horns, resisting stubbornly; then a cart again, and in it drunken peasants swinging their legs. An old woman led a little boy in a big cap and big boots; the boy was tired out with the heat and the heavy boots which pre- vented from bending his legs at the knees, but yet he blew a tin trumpet unceasingly aU his might. They had gone do^ the slope and t^rced into the street, but the trumpet could still be heard.

"Our mill owners don't seem quite themselves • • ." said Yelizarov. "It's bad. Kostukov got angry with me. 'Too manv battens have been used for the cornices.' 'Too many? As many have been used as were needed, Vassily Danilych; I don't eat them with my porridge.' 'How can you speak to me like that?' said he, 'You good-for- nothing, you blockhead! Don't forget yourself! It was I made you a contractor.' 'That's nothing so wonderful,' said I. 'Even before I got to be a contractor I used to have tea every day.' 'You are all crooks . . .' he said. I held my peace. 'We are crooks in this world,' thought I, 'and you will be the crooks in the next. . . .' Ha- ha-ha! The next day he was softer. 'Don't you bear malice against me for my words, Makarych,' he said. 'If I said too much,' says he, 'what of it? I ^ a merchant of the first guild, your better—you ought to hold your tongue.' 'You,' said I, 'are a merchant of the first guild and I am a carpenter, that's correct. And Saint Joseph was a carpenter, too. Ours is a righteous and godly calling, and if you are pleased to be my better you are very welcome to it, Vassily Danilych.' And later on, after that conversation I mean, I thought: 'Which was the better man? A merchant of the first guild or a carpenter?' The carpenter must be, children!"

Crutch thought a minute and added:

"Yes, that's how it is, children. He who works, he who is patient is the better man."

By now the sun had set and a thick mist as white as milk was rising over the river, in the church enclosure, and in the open spaces round the mills. Now when darkness was coming on rapidly, when lights were twinkling below, and when it seemed as though the mists were hiding a fathomless abyss, Lipa and her mother who were born in poverty and prepared to live so till the end, giving up to others everything except their frightened, gentle souls, may perhaps have fancied for a minute that in this vast, mysterious world, among the endless series of lives, they too counted for some- thing, and they too were better than someone; they liked sitting up there, they smiled happily and forgot that they must go down below again all the same.

At last they reached home. The mowers were sitting on the ground at the gates near the shop. As a rule the Ukleyevo peasants refused to work for Tzybukin, and he had to hire strangers, and now in the darkness it seemed as though there were men with long black beards sitting there. The shop was open, and through the doorway they could see the deaf man playing checkers with a boy. The mowers were singing softly, almost inaudibly, or were loudly demanding their wages for the previous day, but they were not paid for fear they should go away before tomorrow. Old Tzybukin, with his coat off, was sitting in his waistcoat with Ak- sinya under the birch-tree, drinking tea; a lighted lamp was on the table.

"I say, grandfather," a mower called from outside the gates, as though taunting him, "pay us half anyway! Hey, grandfather."

And at once there was the sound of laughter, and then again they sang almost inaudibly. . . . Crutch, too, sat down to have some tea.

'We have been to the fair, you know," he began tell- ing them. "We had a fine time, a very fine time, my children, praise the Lord. But an unfortunate thing hap- pened: Sashka the blacksmith bought some tobacco and gave the shopman half a ruble, you know. And the half ruble was a false one"—Crutch went on, and he meant to speak in a whisper, but he spoke in a smothered husky voice which was audible to everyone. "The half- ruble turned out to be a bad one. He was asked where he got it. 'Anisim Tzybukin gave it me,' he said, 'when

I was at his wedding,' he said. They called the police, took the man away. . . . Look out, Grigory Petrovich, that nothing comes of it, no talk. . . ."

"Gra-ndfather!" the same voice called tauntingly out- side the gates. "Gra-andfather!"

A silence followed.

"Ah, little children, little children, little children . . ." Crutch muttered rapidly, and he got up. He was over- come with drowsiness. "Well, thank you for the tea, for the sugar, little children. It is time to sleep. I'm broken down, my beams have rotted away. Ho-ho-ho!"

As he walked away he said: "I suppose it's time I was dead," and he gave a sob. Old Tzybukin did not finish his tea but sat on a little, pondering; and his face looked as though he were listening to the footsteps of Crutch, who was far down the street.

"Sashka the blacksmith told a lie, I expect," said Aksinya, guessing his thoughts.

He went into the house and came back a little later with a parcel; he opened it, and there was the gleam of rubles—perfectly new coins. He took one, tried it with his teeth, flung it on the tray; then flung down another.

"The rubles really are false ..." he said, looking at Aksinya and seeming perplexed. "These are those Ani- sim brought, his present. Take them, daughter," he whispered, and thrust the parcel into her hands. "Take them and throw them into the well . . . confound them! And mind there is no talk about it. Harm might come of it. . . . Take away the samovar, put out the light."

Lipa and her mother sitting in the barn saw the lights go out one after another; only up in Varvara's room there were blue and red icon lamps gleaming, and a feeling of peace, contentment, and happy ignorance seemed to float down from there. Praskovya could never get used to her daughter's being married to a rich man, and when she c^e to the house she huddled timidly in the entry with a beseeching smile on her face, and tea and sugar were sent out to her. And Lipa could not get used to it either, and after her husband had gone away she did not sleep in her bed, but lay down any- where to sleep, in the kitchen or the shed, and every day she scrubbed the floor or washed the clothes, and felt as though she were hired by the day. And now, on coming back from the service at Kazanskoye, they had tea in the kitchen with the cook; then they went into the shed and lay down on the ground between the sledge and the waU. It was dark here and smelled of harness. The lights went out about the house, then they could hear the deaf man shutting up the shop, the mowers settling themselves about the yard to sleep. In the distance at the Hrymin Juniors' they were playing the expensive accordion . . . Praskovya and Lipa be- gan to drop off.

When they were awakened by somebody's steps, the moon was shining brightly; at the entrance to the shed stood Aksinya with her bedding in her arms.

"Maybe it's a bit cooler here," she said; then she came in and lay down almost in the doorway so that the moonlight feU full upon her.

She did not sleep, but breathed heavily, tossing from side to side with the heat, throwing off almost all the bedclothes. And in the magic moonlight what a beauti- ful, what a proud animal she was! A little time passed, and then steps were heard again: the old father, white all over, appeared in the doorway.

"Aksinya," he called, "are you here?"

'Well?" she responded angrily.

"I told you just now to throw the money into the well, did you do it?"

"What next! Throwing property into the water! I gave it to the mowers . . ."

"Oh my God!" cried the old man, dumfounded and alarmed. "Oh my God! you wicked woman. . .

He struck his hands together and went out, and kept talking to himself as he went away. And a little later Aksinya sat up and sighed heavily with annoyance, then rose and, gathering up her bedclothes in her arms, went out.

"Why did you marry me into this family, mother?" said Lipa.

"One has to be married, daughter. It was not us that ordered things so."

And a feeling of inconsolable woe was ready to take possession of them. But it seemed to them that someone was looking down from the height of the heavens, out of the blue, where the stars were, that someone saw everything that was going on in Ukleyevo, and was watching over them. And however powerful evil was, yet the night was cahn and beautiful, and yet in God's world there is and will be righteousness as cahn and beautiful, and everything on earth is only waiting to be made one with righteousness, even as the moonlight is blended with the night.

And both, huddling close to one another, fell asleep comforted.

VI

News had come long before that Anisim had been put in prison for counterfeiting money and circulating it. Months went by, more than half a year went by, the long winter was over, spring had begun, and everyone in the house and in the village had grown used to the fact that Anisim was in prison. And when anyone passed by the house or the shop at night he would remember that Anisim was in prison; and when they rang at the churchyard for some reason, that, too, reminded people that he was in prison awaiting trial.

It seemed as though a shadow had fallen upon the house. It looked more somber, the roof had become rusty, the green paint on the heavy, iron-bound door into the shop had faded; and old Tzybukin himself seemed to have grown darker. He had given up cutting his hair and beard, and looked shaggy. He no longer sprang jauntily into his chaise, nor shouted to beggars: "God will provide!" His strength was on the wane, and that was evident in everything. People were less afraid of him now, and the police officer drew up a formal charge against him in the shop, though he received his regular bribe as before; and three times the old man was called up to the town to be tried for the illicit sale of spirits, and the case was continually adjourned owing to the nonappearance of witnesses, and old Tzybukin was worn out with worry.

He often went to see his son, hired lawyers, handed in petitions, presented a banner to some church. He presented the warden of the prison in which Anisim was confined with a long spoon and a silver holder for a tea- glass with the inscription: "The soul knows its right measure."

"There is no one to look after things for us," said Varvara. "Tut, tut. . . . You ought to ask someone of the gentry to write to the head officials. . . . At least they might let him out on bail! Why wear the poor fellow out?"

She, too, was grieved, but she nevertheless grew stouter and whiter; she lighted the lamps before the icons as before, and saw that everything in the house was clean, and regaled the guests with jam and apple tarts. The deaf man and Aksinya looked after the shop.

A new project was in progress—a brickyard in Butyo- kino—and Aksinya went there almost every day in the chaise. She drove herseU, and when she met acquaint- ances she stretched out her neck like a snake in the young rye, and smiled naively and enigmatically. Lipa spent her time playing with the baby which had been born to her just before Lent. It was a tiny, thin, pitiful little baby, and it was strange that it should cry and gaze about and be considered a human being, and even be called Nikifor. He lay in his cradle, and Lipa would walk away towards the door and say, bowing to him: "How do you do, Nikifor Anisimych!" And she would rush at him and kiss him. Then she would walk away to the door, bow again, and say: "How do you do, Nikifor Anisimych!" And he kicked up his little red legs, and his crying was mixed with laughter like the carpenter Yelizarov's.

At last the day of the trial was fixed. Tzybukin went away some five days before. Then the Tzybukins heard that the peasants called as witnesses had been fetched; their old workman who was one of those to receive a notice to appear went too.

The trial was on a Thursday. But Sunday had passed, and Tzybukin was still not back, and there was no news. Towards evening on Tuesday Varvara was sitting at the open window, waiting for her husband to come. In the next room Lipa was playing with her baby. She was tossing him up in her arms and saying ecstatically:

"You will grow ever so big, ever so big. You will be a peasant, we shall go out to work by the day together! We shall go out to work by the day together!"

"Come, come," said Varvara, offended. "Go out to work by the day, what an idea, you silly thing! He will be a merchant . . . I"

Lipa sang softly, but a minute later she forgot and began again:

"You will grow ever so big, ever so big. You wiU be a peasant, we'll go out to work by the day together."

"There she is at it again!"

Lipa, with Nikifor in her arms, stood still in the door- way and asked:

"Why do I love him so much, maminka? Why do I feel so sorry for him?" she went on in a quivering voice, and her eyes glistened with tears.

"Who is he? What is he like? As light as a little feather, as a little crumb, but I love him, I love him as if he were a real person. Here he can do nothing, he can't talk, and yet I know from his little eyes what he vvants."

Varvara pricked up her ears: the sound of the eve- ning train coming into the station reached her. Had her husband come? She did not hear and she did not heed what Lipa was saying, she had no idea how the time passed, but only trembled all over—not with dread, but with intense curiosity. She saw a cart fuU of peasants roll quickly by with a rattle. It was the witnesses coming back from the station. When the cart passed the shop the old workman jumped out and walked into the yard. She could hear him being greeted in the yard and being asked some questions. . . •

"Loss of rights and all property," he said loudly, "and six years' penal servitude in Siberia."

She could see Aksinya come out of the shop by the back way; she had just been selling kerosene, and in one hand held a bottle and in the other a can, and she had some silver coins in her mouth.

"Where is father?" she asked, lisping.

"At the station," answered the laborer.

" 'When it gets a little darker,' he said, 'then I'll come.'"

And when it became known all through the house- hold that Anisim was sentenced to penal servitude, the cook in the kitchen suddenly broke into a wail as though at a funeral, imagining that this was demanded by the proprieties:

"Who will care for us now you have gone, Anisim Grigorich, our bright falcon. . . .''

The dogs began barking in alarm. Varvara ran to the window, and rushing about in distress, shouted to the cook with all her might, straining her voice:

"Sto-op, Stepanida, sto-op! Don't harrow us, for Christ's sake!"

They forgot to set the samovar, they could think of nothing. Only Lipa could not make out what it was all about and went on playing with her baby.

When the old father arrived from the station they asked him no questions. He greeted them and walked through all the rooms in silence; he had no supper.

'There was no one to see about things . . .'' Varvara began when they were alone. "I said you should have asked some of the gentry, you would not listen to me at the time. . . . A petition would . . .''

"I saw to things," said her husband with a wave of his hand. "When Anisim was condemned I went to the gentleman who was defending him. 'It's no use now,' he said, 'it's too late'; and Anisim said the same; it's too late. But all the same as I came out of court I engaged a lawyer and gave him an advance. I'll wait a week and then I'll go again. It is as God wills."

Again the old man walked through all the rooms, and when he went back to Varvara he said:

"I must be ill. My head's in a sort of ... fog. My thoughts are mixed up.''

He closed the door that Lipa might not hear, and went on softly:

"I am worried about the money. Do you remember before his wedding Anisim's bringing me some new rubles and half-rubles? One parcel I put away at the time, but the others I mixed with my own money. When my uncle Dmitri Filatych—the kingdom of Heaven be his—was alive, he used to go to Moscow and to the Crimea to buy goods. He had a wife, and this same wife, when he was away buying goods, used to take up with other men. They had half a dozen children. And when uncle was in his cups he would laugh and say: 'I never can make out,' he used to say, 'which are my children and which are other people's.' An easy-going disposi- tion, to be sure; and so now I can't tell which are gen- uine rubles and which are false ones. And they all seem false to me." "Nonsense, God bless you."

"I buy a ticket at the station, I give the man three rubles, and I keep fancying they are counterfeit. And I am frightened. I must be ill.''

"There's no denying it, we are all in God's hands. . . . Oh dear, dear . . ." said Varvara, and she shook her head. "You ought to think about this, Grigory Petro- vich: you never know, anything may happen, you are not a young man. See they don't wrong your grandchild when you are dead and gone. Oh, I am afraid they will be unfair to Nikifor! He is as good as fatherless, his mother's young and foolish . . . You ought to settle something on the poor little boy, at least the land, Bu- tyokino, Grigory Petrovich, really! Think it over!" Var- vara went on persuading him. "He's such a pretty boy, it's a pity! You go tomorrow and make out a deed; why put it off?"

'Td forgotten my grandson," said Tzybukin. "I must go and have a look at him. So you say the boy is all right? Well, let him grow up, please God."

He opened the door and, crooking his finger, beck- oned to Lipa. She went up to him with the baby in her arms.

"If there is anything you want, Lipynka, you ask for it," he said. "And eat anything you like, we don't grudge it, so long as it does you good. . . ." He made the sign of the cross over the baby. "And take care of my grand- child. My son is gone, but my grandson is left."

Tears rolled down his cheeks; he gave a sob and went away. Soon afterwards he went to bed and slept soundly after seven sleepless nights.

vn

Old Tzybukin went to the town for a short visit. Someone told Aksinya that he had gone to the notary to make his will and that he was leaving Butyokino, the very place where she had set up a brickyard, to Nikifor, his grandson. She was informed of this in the morning when old Tzybukin and Varvara were sitting near the steps under the birch-tree, having their tea. She closed the shop in the front and at the back, gathered together all the keys she had, and flung them at her father-in- law's feet.

"I am not going on working for you," she began in a loud voice, and suddenly broke into sobs. "It seems I am not your daughter-in-law, but a servant! Every- body's jeering and saying, 'See what a servant the Tzy- bukins have got hold of!' I did not hire myself out to you! I am not a beggar, I am not a homeless wench, I have a father and mother."

She did not wipe away her tears; she fixed upon her father-in-law eyes full of tears, vindictive, squinting

with anger; her face and neck were red and tense, and

she was shouting at the top of her voice.

"I don't mean to go on slaving for you!" she con- tinued. "I am worn out. When it is work, when it is sitting in the shop day in and day out, sneaking out at night for vodka—then it is my share, but when it is giving away the land then it is for that convict's wife and her imp. She is mistress here, and I am her servant. Give her everything, the convict's wife, and may it choke her! I am going home! Find yourselves some other fool, you damned bloodsuckers!"

The old man had never in his life scolded or punished his children, and had never dreamed that one of his family could speak to him rudely or behave disrespect- fully; and now he was very much frightened; he ran into the house and hid behind the cupboard. And Var- vara was so much flustered that she could not get up from her seat, and only waved her hands before her as though she were warding off a bee.

"Oh, Holy Saints! What's the meaning of it?" she mut- tered in horror. ''What is she shouting? Oh, dear, dear! • . . People will hear! Hush. Oh, hush!"

''You have given Butyokino to the convict's wife," Aksinya went on bawling. "Give her everything now, I don't want anything from you! Go to hell! You are all a gang of thieves here! I have seen enough, I have had my fiU of it! You have robbed people coming and going; you have robbed old and young alike, you brigands! And who has been selling vodka without a license? And false money? You've stuffed your coffers fuU of false coins, and now I am no more use!"

By now a crowd had collected at the open gate and was staring into the yard.

"Let the people look," bawled Aksinya. "I'U put you all to shame! You shall burn up with shame! You'll grovel at my feet. Hey! Stepan," she called to the deaf man, "let us go home this minute! Let us go to my father and mother; I don't want to live with convicts. Get ready!"

Clothes were hanging on lines stretched across the yard; she snatched off her petticoats and blouses still wet and flung them into the deaf man's arms. Then in her fury she dashed about the yard where the linen hung, tore down all of it, and what was not hers she threw on the ground and trampled upon.

"Holy Saints, stop her," moaned Varvara.

"What a woman! Give her Butyokino! Give it to her, for Christ's sake!"

"Well! Wha-at a woman!" people were saying at the gate. "She's a wo-oman! She's going it—something like!"

Aksinya ran into the kitchen where laundering was being done. Lipa was washing alone, the cook had gone to the river to rinse the clothes. Steam was rising from the trough and from the caldron near the stove, and the air in the kitchen was close and thick with vapor. On the floor was a heap of unwashed clothes, and Nikifor, kicking up his little red legs, lay on a bench near them, so that if he fell he should not hurt himself. Just as Aksinya went in Lipa took fhc former's chemise out of the heap and put it in the trough, and was just stretch- ing out her hand to a big pitcher of boiling water which was standing on the table.

"Give it here," said Aksinya, looking at her with hatred, and snatching the chemise out of the trough; "it is not your business to touch my linen! You are a convict's wife, and ought to know your place and who you are!"

Lipa gazed at her, taken aback, and did not under- 500 the portable chekhov

stand, but suddenly she caught the look Aksinya turned upon the child, and at once she understood and went numb all over.

"You've taken my land, so here you are!" Saying this Aksinya snatched up the pitcher with the boiling water and flung it over Nikifor.

After this there was heard a scream such as had never been heard before in Ukleyevo, and no one would have believed that a little weak creature like Lipa could scream like that. And it was suddenly quiet in the yard. Askinya walked into the house in silence with the old naive smile on her lips. . . . The deaf man kept mov- ing about the yard with his arms full of linen, then he began hanging it up again, silently, without haste. And until the cook came back from the river no one ventured

to go into the kitchen to see what had happened there.

VIII

Nikifor was taken to the district hospital, and towards evening he died there. Lipa did not wait to be fetched, but wrapped the dead baby in its little quilt and carried it home.

The hospital, a new one recently built, with big win- dows, stood high up on a hill; it was glittering in the setting sun and looked as though it were on fire from inside. There was a little village below. Lipa went down the road, and before reaching the village sat down by a pond. A woman brought a horse to water but the horse would not drink.

"What more do you want?" the woman said to it softly, in perplexity. "What more do you want?''

A boy in a red shirt, sitting at the water's edge, was washing his father's boots. And not another soul was in sight either in the village or on the hill.

"It's not drinking," said Lipa, looking at the horse.

Then the woman witi the horse and the boy with the boots walked away, and there was no one left at all. The sun went to sleep, covering itself with cloth of gold and purple, and long clouds, red and lilac, stretched across the sky, guarded its rest. Somewhere far away a bittern cried, a hollow, melancholy sound as of a cow shut up in a barn. The cry of that mysterious bird was heard every spring, but no one knew what it was like or where it lived. At the top of the hill by the hospital, in the bushes close to the pond, and in the fields, the nightingales were trilling. The cuckoo kept reckoning someone's years and losing count and beginning again. In the pond the frogs called angrily to one another, straining them- selves to bursting, and one could even make out the words: "That's what you are! That's what you are(" What a noise there wasl It seemed as though all these creatures were singing and shouting so that no one might sleep on that spring night, so that all, even the angry frogs, might appreciate and enjoy every minute: life is given only once.

A silver half-moon was shining in the sky; there were many stars. Lipa had no idea how long she sat by the pond, but when she got up and walked on everybody was asleep in the little village, and there was not a single light. It was probably about eight miles' walk home, but neither body nor mind seemed equal to it. The moon gleamed now in front, now on the right, and the same cuckoo kept calling in a voice grown husky, with a chuckle as though gibing at her: "Hey, look out, you'll lose your way!" Lipa walked rapidly; she lost her ker- chief . . . she looked at the sky and wondered where her baby's soul was now: was it following her, or float- ing aloft yonder among the stars and not thinking of her, the mother, any more? Oh, how lonely it is in the open country at night, in the midst of that singing when you yourself cannot sing; in the midst of the incessant cries of joy when you yourself cannot be joyful, when the moon, which cares not whether it is spring or winter, whether men are alive or dead, looks do^, lonely, too. . . . When there is grief in the heart it is hard to be without people. If only her mother, Praskovya, had been with her, or Crutch, or the cook, or some peasant!

"Boo-oo!" cried the bittern. "Boo-oo!"

And suddenly the sound of human speech became clearly audible:

"Hitch up the horses, Vavila!"

Ahead of her, by the wayside a camp fire was burning: the flames had died down, there were only red embers. She could hear the horses munching. In the darkness she could see the outlines of two carts, one with a barrel, the other, a lower one, with sacks in it, and the figures of two men; one was leading a horse to put it into the shafts, the other was standing motionless by the fire with his hands behind his back. A dog growled near the carts. The one who was leading the horse stopped and said:

"Someone seems to be coming along the road."

"Sharik, be quiet!" the other man called to the dog.

And from the voice one could tell that he was an old man. Lipa stopped and said:

"God aid you."

The old man went up to her and said after a pause:

"Good evening!"

"Your dog does not bite, grandfather?"

"No, come along, he won't touch you."

"I have been at the hospital," said Lipa after a pause. "My little son died there. Here I am carrying him home."

It must have been unpleasant for the old man to hear this, for he moved away and said hurriedly:

"No matter, my dear. It's God's will. You are daw- dling, lad," he added, addressing his companion; "look alive!"

"Your yoke isn't there," said the young man; "I don't •. »» see it."

"That's just like Vavila!"

The old man picked up an ember, blew on it—only his eyes and nose were lighted up—then, when they had found the yoke, he went over to Lipa with the light and looked at her, and his look expressed compassion and tenderness.

"You are a mother," he said; "every mother grieves for her child."

And he sighed and shook his head as he said it. Vavila threw something on the fire, stamped it out—and at once it was very dark; the immediate scene vanished, and as before there were only the fields, the sky with the stars, and the noise of the birds keeping each other from sleep. And the landrail caUed, it seemed, in the very place where the fire had been.

But a minute passed, and the two ^ts and the old man and lanky Vavila became visible again. The carts creaked as they rolled out on the road.

"Are you holy men?" Lipa asked the old man.

"No. We are from Firsanovo."

"You looked at me just now and my heart was soft- ened. And the lad is so gentle. I thought you must be hŭly men."

"Have you far to go?"

"To Ukleyevo."

"Get in, we will give you a lift as far as Kuzmenki, then you go straight on and we turn off to the left."

Vavila got into the cart with the barrel and the old man and Lipa got into the other. They moved at a walk- ing pace, Vavila in front.

"My baby was in torment all day," said Lipa. "He looked at me with his little eyes and said nothing; he wanted to speak and could not. Lord God! Queen of Heaven! In my grief I kept falling down on the floor. I would be standing there and then I would fall down by the bedside. And tell me, grandfather, why should a little one be tormented before his death? When a grown-up person, a man or woman, is in torment, his sins are forgiven, but why a little one, when he has no sins? Why?"

"Who can tell?" answered the old man.

They drove on for half an hour in silence.

"We can't know everything, how and why," said the old man. "A bird is given not four wings but two be- cause it is able to fly with two; and so man is not per- mitted to know everything but only a half or a quarter. As much as he needs to know in order to live, so much he knows."

"It is better for me to go on foot, grandfather. Now my heart is all of a tremble."

"Never mind, sit still."

The old man yawned and made the sign of the cross over his mouth.

"Never mind," he repeated. "Yours is not the worst of sorrows. Life is long, there is good and bad yet to come, there is everything yet to come. Great is mother Russia," he said, and looked round on either side of him. "I have been all over Russia, and I have seen every- thing in her, and you may believe my words, my dear. There will be good and there will be bad. I went as a delegate from my viUage to Siberia, and I have been to the Amur River and the Altai Mountains and I lived in Siberia; I worked the land there, then I got homesick for mother Russia and I came back to my native village. We went back to Russia on foot; and I remember we went on a ferry, and I was thin as thin, all in rags, bare- foot, freezing with cold, and gnawing a crust, and a gen- tleman who was on the ferry—the kingdom of Heaven be his if he is dead—looked at me pitifully, and tears came into his eyes. 'Ah,' he said, 'your bread is black, your days are black. . . .' And when I got home, as the saying is, there was neither stick nor stone; I had a wife, but I left her behind in Siberia, she was buried there. So I am a hired man now. And I tell you: since then I have had it good as well as bad. Here I do not want to die, my dear, I would be glad to live another twenty years; so there has been more of the good. And great is our mother Russia!" and again he gazed on either side and looked round.

"Grandfather," Lipa asked, "when anyone dies, how many days does his soul walk the earth?"

"Who can telll Ask Vavila here, he has been to school. Now they teach them everything. Vavila!" the old man called to him.

"Yes!"

"Vavila, when anyone dies how long docs his soul walk the earth?"

Vavila stopped the horse and only then answered:

"Nine days. After my uncle Kirilla died, his soul lived in our cottage thirteen days."

"How do you know?"

"For thirteen days there was a knocking in the stove."

"Well, all right. Go on," said the old man, and it could be seen that he 'did not believe a word of all that.

Near Kuzmenki the cart turned into the highroad while Lipa walked straight on. By now it was getting light. As she went down into the ravine the Ukleyevo houses and the church were hidden in fog. It was cold, and it seemed to her that the same cuckoo was calling still.

When Lipa reached home the cattle had not yet been driven out; everyone was asleep. She sat do^ on the steps and waited. The old man was the first to come out; he understood what had happened from the first glance at her, and for a long time he could not utter a word, but only smacked his lips.

"Oh, Lipa," he said, "you did not take care of my grandchild. . . ."

Varvara was awakened. She struck her hands to- gether and broke into sobs, and immediately began lay- ing out the baby.

"And he was a pretty child . . ." she said. "Oh, dear, dear. . . . You had the one child, and you did not take enough care of him, you silly thing. • • ."

There was a requiem service in the morning and again in the evening. The funeral took place the next day, and after it the guests and the priests ate a great deal, and with such greed that one might have thought that they had not tasted food for a long time. Lipa waited at table, and the priest, lifting his fork on which there was a salted mushroom, said to her:

"Don't grieve for the babe. For of such is the king- dom of Heaven."

And only when they had all left Lipa realized fully that there was no Nikifor and never would be, she real- ized it and broke into sobs. And she did not know what room to go into to sob, for she felt that now that her child was dead there was no place for her in the house, that she had no reason to be there, tha't she was in the way; and the others felt it, too.

"Now what are you bellowing for?" Aksinya shouted, suddenly appearing in the doorway; because of the fu- neral she was dressed all in new clothes and had pow- dered her face. "Shut up!"

Lipa tried to stop but could not, and sobbed louder than ever.

"Do you hear?" shouted Aksinya, and stamped her foot in violent anger. "Who is it I am speaking to? Get out of the house and don't set foot here again, you con- vict's wife. Get out."

"There, there, there," the old man put in fussily. "Aksinya, don't make such an outcry, my dear. . . . She is crying, it is only natural . . . her child is dead. ..."

" 'It's only natural,' " Aksinya mimicked him. "Let her stay the night here, and don't let me see a trace of her here tomorrow! 'It's only natural!' • . ," she mimicked him again, and, laughing, went into the shop.

Early the next morning Lipa went off to her mother at Torguyevo.

IX

The roof and the front door of the shop have now been repainted and are as bright as though they were new, there are gay geraniums in the windows as of old, and what happened in Tzybukin's house and yard three years ago is almost forgotten.

Grigory Petrovich is still looked upon as the master, but in reality everything has passed into Aksinya's hands; she buys and sells, and nothing can be done with- out her consent. The brickyard is working well; and as bricks are wanted for the railway the price has gone up to twenty-four rubles a thousand; peasant women and girls cart the bricks to the station and load them up in cars and earn a quarter-ruble a day for the work.

Aksinya has gone into partnership with the Hrymin Juniors, and their mill is now called Hrymin Juniors and Co. They have opened a tavern near the station, and now the expensive accordion is played not at the mill but at the tavern, and the postmaster, who is engaged in some sort of business, too, often goes there, and so does the stationmaster. Hrymin Juniors have presented the deaf man with a gold watch, and he is constantly taking it out of his pocket and putting it to his ear.

People say of Aksinya that she has become a person of power; and it is true that when she drives to her brick- yard in the morning, handsome and happy, with the naive smile on her face, and afterwards when she gives orders there, one is aware of her great power. Everyone is afraid of her in the house and in the village and in the brickyard. When she goes to the post the postmaster jumps up and says to her:

"I humbly beg you to be seated, Aksinya Abramovna!"

A certain landowner, middle-aged but foppish, in a tunic of fine cloth and high patent leather boots, sold her a horse, and was so carried away by talking to her that he knocked down the price to meet her wishes. He held her hand a long time and, looking into her merry, sly, naive eyes, said:

"For a woman like you, Aksinya Abramovna, I should be ready to do anything you please. Only say when we can meet where no one will interfere with us."

"\Vhy, whenever you like."

And since then the elderly fop has been driving up to the shop almost every day to drink beer. And the beer is horrid, bitter as wormwood. The landowner wags his head, but drinks it.

Olc;l Tzybukin does not have anything at all to do with the business now. He does not keep any money be- cause he cannot tell good from counterfeit coins, but he is silent, he says nothing of this weakness. He has be- come forgetful, and if they don't give him food he does not ask for it. They have grown used to having dinner without him, and Varvara often says:

"He went to bed again yesterday without eating any- thing."

And she says it unconcernedly because she is used to it. For some reason, summer and winter alike, he wears a fur coat, and only in very hot weather he does not go out but sits at home. As a rule he puts on his fur coat, wraps it round him, turns up his collar, and walks about the village, along the road to the station, or sits from morning till night on the seat near the church gates. He sits there without stirring. Passers-by bow to him, but he does not respond, for as of old he dislikes the peasants. If he is asked a question he answers quite rationally and politely, but briefly.

There is a rumor going about in the village that his daughter-in-law has turned him out of the house and gives him nothing to eat, and that he is fed by charitable folk; some are glad, others are sorry for him.

Varvara has gro^ even fatter and her skin whiter. and as before she is active in good works, and Aksinya does not interfere with her.

There is so much jam now that they have not time to eat it before the fresh fruit comes in; it goes sugary, and Varvara almost sheds tears, not knowing what to do with it.

They have begun to forget about Anisim. Some time ago there came a letter from him written in verse on a big sheet of paper as though it were a petition, all in the same splendid handwriting. Evidently his friend Samorodov was doing time with him. Under the verses in an ugly, scarcely legible handwriting there was a single line: "I am ill here all the time; I am wretched, for Christ's sake help me!"

One fine autumn day towards evening old Tzybukin was sitting near the church gates, with the collar of his fur coat turned up and nothing of him could be seen but his nose and the peak of his cap. At the other end of the long bench sat Yelizarov the contractor, and beside him Yakov the school watchman, a toothless old man of seventy. Crutch and the watchman were talking.

"Children ought to give food and drink to the old. . . . Honor thy father and mother . . ." Yakov was saying with irritation, "while she, this woman, has turned her father-in-law out of his o^ house; the old man has neither food nor drink, where is he to go? He has not had a morsel these three days."

"Three days!" said Crutch, amazed.

"Here he sits and does not say a word. He has gro^ feeble. And why be silent? He ought to prosecute her, they wouldn't pat her on the back in court."

"Wouldn't pat whom on the back?" asked Crutch, not hearing.

"What?"

"The woman's all right, she does her best. In their line of business they can't get on without that . . . without sin, I mean. . . ."

"From his own house," Yakov went on with irritation. "Save up and buy your own house, then tum people out of it! She is a nice one, to be sure! A pla-ague!"

Tzybukin listened and did not stir.

"Whether it is your own house or others' it makes no diference so long as it is warm and the women don't scold . . ." said Crutch, and he laughed. "When I was young I was very fond of my Nastasya. She was a quiet woman. And she used to be always at it: 'Buy a house, Makarych! Buy a house, Makarych! Buy a horse, Ma- karych!' She was dying and yet she kept on saying, 'Buy yourself a racing droshky, Makarych, so that you don't have to walk.' And I bought her nothing but ginger- bread."

"Her husband's deaf and stupid," Yakov went on, not listening to Crutch; "a regular fool, just like a goose. He can't understand anything. Hit a goose on the head with a stick and even then it does not understand."

Crutch got up to go home. Yakov also got up, and both of them went off together, still talking. When they had gone fifty paces old Tzybukin got up, too, and walked after them, stepping uncertainly as though on slippery ice.

The village was already plunged in the dusk of eve- ning and the sun only gleamed on the upper part of the road which ran wriggling like a snake up the slope. Old women were coming back from the woods and children with them; they were bringing baskets of mushrooms. Peasant women and girls came in a crowd from the sta- tion where they had been loading the cars with bricks, and their noses and the skin under their eyes were cov- ered with red brick-dust. They were singing. Ahead of them all was Lipa, with her eyes turned towards the sky, she was singing in a high voice, breaking into trills as though exulting in the fact that at last the day was over and the time for rest had come. In the crowd walking with a bundle in her arms, breathless as usual, was her mother, Praskovya, who still went out to work by the day.

"Good evening, Makarych!" cried Lipa, seeing Crutch. "Good evening, dear!"

"Good evening, Lipinka," cried Crutch delighted. "Girls, women, love the rich carpenter! Ho-ho! My little children, my little children. (Crutch gave a sob.) My dear little hatchets!"

Crutch and Yakov went on farther and could still be heard talking. Then after them came old Tzybukin and there was a sudden hush in the crowd. Lipa and Pras- kovya had dropped a little behind, and when the old man was abreast of them Lipa bowed down low and said: "Good evening, Grigory Petrovich." Her mother, too, bowed. The old man stopped and, saying nothing, looked at the two; his lips were quiver- ing and his eyes full of tears. Lipa took out of her mother's bundle a piece of pie stuffed with buckwheat and gave it to him. He took it and began eating.

The sun had set by now: its glow died away on the upper part of the road too. It was getting dark and cool. Lipa and Praskovya walked on and for some time kept crossing themselves.

1900

PLAYS

The Boor

A JEST IN ONE ACT

Yelena Ivanovna Popova, a little widow with dim- pled cheeks, a landowner.

Grigory STEPANOVICH SMmNOv, a middle-aged gen- tleman farmer.

L^^, Mme. Popova's footman, an old man.

_T

HE drawing room in Mme. Popova's manor house. Mme. Popova, in deep mourning, her eyes fixed on a photograph, and Luka.

L^^: It isn't right, madam. You're just killing your- self. The maid and the cook have gone berrying, every living thing rejoices, even the cat knows how to enjoy life and wanders through the courtyard catching birds, but you stay in the house as if it were a convent and take no pleasure at all. Yes, really! It's a whole year now, I figure, that you haven't left the house!

Mme. Popova: And I never will leave it . . . What for? My life is over. He lies in his grave, and I have buried myself within these four walls. We are both dead.

L^^: There you go again! I oughtn't to listen to you, really. Nikolay Mihailovich is dead, well, there is nothing to do about it, it's the will of God; may the 514

kingdom of Heaven be his. You have grieved over it, and that's enough; there's a limit to everything. One can't cry and wear mourning forever. The time came when my old woman, too, died. Well? I grieved over it, I cried for a month, and that was enough for her, but to go on wailing all my life, why, the old woman isn't worth it. Sighs. You've forgotten all your neighbors. You don't go out and you won't receive anyone. We live, excuse me, like spiders—we never see the light of day. The mice have eaten the livery. And it isn't as if there were no nice people around—the county is full of gentlemen. A regiment is quartered at Ryblov and every officer is a good-looker, you can't take your eyes off them. And every Friday there's a ball at the camp, and 'most every day the military band is playing. Eh, my dear lady, you're young and pretty, just peaches and cream, and you could lead a life of pleasure. Beauty doesn't last forever, you know. In ten years' time you'll find yourself wanting to strut like a pea-hen and dazzle the officers, but it will be too late.

Mme. Popova, resolutely: I beg you never to mention this to me again! You know that since Nikolay Mihail- ovich died, life has been worth nothing to me. You think that I am alive, but it only seems so to you! I vowed to myself that never to the day of my death would I take off my mourning or see the light. Do you hear me? Let his shade see how I love him! Yes, I know, it is no secret to you that he was often unjust to me, cruel, and . . . even unfaithful, but I shall be true to the end, and prove to him how I can love. There, in the other world, he will find me just the same as I was before he died . . •

L^^: Instead of talking like that, you ought to go and take a walk in the garden, or have Toby or Giant put in the shafts and drive out to pay calls on the neighbors.

Mme. Popova: Oh! Weeps.

LuKA: Madam! Dear madam! What's wrong? Bless you!

Mme. Popova: He was so fond of Toby! When he drove out to the Korchagins and the Vlasovs it was always with Toby. What a wonderful driver he was! How grace- ful he was, when he pulled at the reins with all his might! Do you remember? Toby, Toby! Tell them to give him an extra measure of oats today.

L^^.: Very well, madam. The doorbell rings sharply.

Mme. Popova, startled: Who is it? Say that I am at home to no one.

LuKA: Very good, madam. Exits.

Mme. Popova, looking at the photograph: You shall see, Nicolas, how I can love and forgive. My love will die only with me, when my poor heart stops beating. Laughs through her tears. And aren't you ashamed? I am a good, faithful little wife, I've locked myself in and shall remain true to you to the grave, and you . . . aren't you ashamed, you naughty boy? You were un- faithful to me, you made scenes, you left me alone for weeks . . . L^^ enters.

L^^., disturbed: Madam, someone is asking for you, wants to see you . • .

Mme. Popova: But you told him, didn't you, that since my husband's death I receive no one?

L^^.: Yes, I did, but he wouldn't listen to me, he says it's a very urgent matter.

Mme. Popova: I do not re-ceive anyone!

Luka: I told him, but . . . he's a perfect devil . . . he curses and barges right in • • . he's in the dining- room now.

Mme. Popova, annoyed: Very well, ask him in . . . What rude people! Exit L^^.. How irritating! What do they want of me? Why do they have to intrude on my solitude? Sighs. No, I see I shall really have to enter a convent. Pensively: Yes, a convent . . . Enter SMIRNOV and L^^..

Smirnov, to LuKA: Blockhead, you talk too much. You jackass! Seeing Mme. Popova, with dignity. Madam, I have the honor to introduce myself: Landowner Grigory Stepanovich Smirnov, lieutenant of the artillery, retired. I am compelled to disturb you in connection with a very weighty matter.

Mme. Popova, without offering her hand: What do you wish?

SMIRNOV: At his death your late husband, with whom I had the honor of being acquainted, was in my debt to the amount of 1200 rubles, for which I hold two notes. As I have to pay interest on a loan to the Land Bank tomorrow, I must request you, madam, to pay me the money today.

Mme. Popova: Twelve hundred . . . • And for what did my husband owe you the money?

Smirnov : He used to buy oats from me.

Mme. Popova, sighing, to LuKA: So don't forget, Luka, to tell them to give Toby an extra measure of oats. Exit L^^. To Smirnov. If Nikolay Mihailovich owed you money, I shall pay you, of course; but you must ex- cuse me, I haven't any ready cash today. The day after tomorrow my steward will be back from town and I will see that he pays you what is owing to you, but just now I cannot comply with your request. Besides, today is exactly seven months since my husband's death and I am in no mood to occupy myself with money matters.

Smirnov: And I am in the mood to be carried out feet foremost if I don't pay the interest tomorrow. They'll seize my estate!

Mme. Popova: The day after tomorrow you wil re- ceive your money.

Smirnov: I need the money today, not the day after tomorrow.

Mme. Popova: I am sorry, but I cannot pay you today.

SMmNOv: And I can't wait till the day after tomorrow.

Mme. Popova: But what can I do if I don't have the money now!

Smirnov: So you can't pay me?

Mme. Popova: No, I can't.

Smirnov: H'm . . . So that's your last word?

Mme. Popova: My last word.

Smirnov : Your last word? Positively?

Mme. Popova: Positively.

Smirnov : Many thanks. I'll make a note of it. Shrugs his shoulders. And they want me to keep cool! I meet the tax commissioner on the road, and he asks me: "Why are you always in a bad humor, Grigory Stepanovich?" But in heaven's name, how can I help being in a bad humor? I'm in desperate need of money. I left home yesterday morning at dawn and called on all my debtors and not one of them paid up! I wore myself out, slept the devil knows where, in some Jewish inn next to a barrel of vodka . . . Finally I come here, fifty miles from home, hoping to get something, and I'm con- fronted with a "mood." How can I help getting in a temper?

Mme. Popova: I thought I made it clear to you that you will get your money as soon as my steward returns from town.

Smirnov: I didn't come to your steward, but to you! What the devil—pardon the expression—do I care for your steward!

Mme. Popova: Excuse me, sir, I am not accustomed to such language or to such a tone. I won't listen to you any more. Exits rapidly.

Smirnov: That's a nice thing! Not in the mood . • • husband died seven months ago! What about me? Do I have to pay the interest or don't I? I'm asking you: do I have to pay the interest or don't I? Well, your husband died, you're not in the mood, and all that . . . and your steward, devil take him, has gone off somewhere, but what do you want me to do? Am I to escape my creditors in a balloon, eh? Or take a running start and dash my head against a wall? I call on Gruzdev, he's not at home, Yaroshevich is hiding, I had an awful row with Kuritzyn and nearly threw him out of the window; Mazutov has an upset stomach, and this one isn't in the mood! Not one scoundrel will pay up! And it's all be- cause I've spoiled them, because I'm a milksop, a softy, a weak Sister. I'm too gentle with them altogether! But wait! You'll find out what I'm like! I won't let you make a fool of me, devil take it! I'll stay right here till she pays up! Ugh! I'm in a perfect rage today, in a rage! Every one of my nerves is trembling with fury, I can hardly breathe. Ouf! Good Lord, I even feel sick! Shouts. You there! Enter Luka.

Luka: What do you wish?

SMIRr-oov: Give me some kvass or a drink of water! Exit Luka. No, but the logic of it! A fellow is in desper- ate need of cash, is on the point of hanging himself, but she won't pay up, because, you see, she isn't in the mood to occupy herself with money matters! Real petti- coat logic! That's why I've never liked to talk to women, and I don't now. I'd rather sit on a powder-keg than talk to a woman. Brr! I'm getting gooseflesh—that skirt made me so furious! I just have to see one of these poetic creatures from a distance and my very calves begin to twitch with rage. It's enough to make me yell for help. Enter Luka.

L^^., handing SMIRNOV a glass of water: Madam is ill and will see no one.

Smirnov: Get out! Exit Luka. Ill and will see no one! All right, don't see me. I'll sit here until you pay up. If you're sick for a week, I'll stay a week; if you're sick a year, I'll stay a year. I'll get my own back, my good woman. You won't get round me with your widow's weeds and your dimples . . . We know those dimples! Shouts through the window. Semyon, take out the horses! We're not leaving so soon! I'm staying on! Tell them at the stables to give the horses oats. You block- head, you've let the left outrider's leg get caught in the reins again! Mimicking the coachman. "It don't matter" . . . I'll show you "don't matter." Walks away from the window. It's horrible . . . the heat is terrific, nobody has paid up, I slept badly, and here's this skirt in mourning, with her moods! I have a headache. Shall I have some vodka? Yes, I think I will. Shouts. You there! Enter L^^.

Luka: What do you wish?

Smirnov: Give me a glass of vodka. Exit L^^. Ouf! Sits down and looks himself over. I cut a fine figure, I must say! All dusty, boots dirty, unwashed, uncombed, straw on my vest. The little lady must have taken me for a highwayman. Yawns. It's a bit uncivil to barge into a drawing-room in such shape, but never mind . . . I'm no caller, just a creditor, and there are no rules as to what the creditor should wear. Enter Luka.

Luka, handing Smirnov the vodka: You allow yourself too many liberties, sir . . .

Smirnov, crossly: What?

L^^: I . . . nothing ... I just meant . . .

Smirnov: To whom do you think you're talking? Shut up!

LuKA, aside: There's a demon in the house . . . The Evil Spirit must have brought him . . . Exit Luka.

Smirnov: Oh, what a rage I'm in! I'm mad enough to grind the whole world to powder. I feel sick. Shouts. You there! Enter Mme. Popova.

Mme. Popova, with downcast eyes: Sir, in my solitude I've long since grown unaccustomed to the human voice, and I cannot bear shouting. I beg you not to disturb my peace!

SMmNov: Pay me my money and I'll drive off.

Mme. Popova: I told you in plain language, I have no ready cash now. Wait till the day after tomorrow.

Smirnov: And I had the honor of telling you in plain language that I need the money today, not the day after tomorrow. If you don't pay me today, I'll have to hang myself tomorrow.

Mme. Popova: But what shall I do if I have no money? How odd!

Smirnov: So you won't pay me now, eh?

Mme. Popova: I can't.

Sl'.«RNov: In that case I stay and I'll sit here till I get the money. Sits down. You'll pay me the day after to- morrow? Excellent. I'll sit here till the day after tomor- row. Jumps up. I ask you: Do I have to pay the interest tomorrow or don't I? Or do you think I'm joking?

Mme. Popova: Sir, I beg you not to shout. This is o.o stable.

Sm^nov: Never mind the stable, I'm asking you: Do I have to pay the interest tomorrow or not?

Mme. Popova: You don't know how to behave in the presence of ladies!

Smirnov: No, madam, I do know how to behave in the presence of ladies!

Mme. Popova: No, you do not! You are a rude, ill- bred man! Decent people don't talk to women that way!

Smirnov: Admirable! How would you like me to talk to you? In French, eh? Rages, and lisps: Madame, fe vous prie, I am delighted that you do not pay me my money . . . Ah, pardonnez-moi if I have discommoded you! It's such delightful weather today! And how your mourning becomes you! Scrapes his foot.

Mme. Popova: That's rude and silly.

Smirnov, mimicking her: Rude and silly! I don't know how to behave in the presence of ladies! Madam, I've seen more ladies than you've seen sparrows! I've fought three duels on account of women, I've jilted twelve women and been jilted by nine! Yes, madam! Time was when I played the fool, sentimentalized, used honeyed words, went out of my way to please, bowed and scraped ... I used to love, pine, sigh at the moon, feel blue, melt, freeze ... I loved passionately, madly, all sorts of ways, devil take me; I chattered like a mag- pie about the emancipation of women, I wasted half my fortune on affairs of the heart, but now, please ex- cuse me! Now you won't bamboozle me! Enough! Dark eyes, burning eyes, ruby lips, dimpled cheeks, the moon, whispers, timid breathing ... I wouldn't give a brass farthing for all this now, madam. Present company ex- cepted, all women, young or old, put on airs, pose, gossip, are liars to the marrow of their bones, are mali- cious, vain, petty, cruel, revoltingly unreasonable, and as for this (taps his forehead), pardon my frankness, a sparrow can give ten points to any philosopher in skirts! You look at one of these poetic creatures: She's all muslin and fluff, an airy demi-goddess, a million trans- ports, but look into her soul and what do you see but a common crocodile! Grips the back of his chair so that it cracks and breaks. But what is most revolting, this crocodile for some reason imagines that the tender feel- ings are her special province, her privilege, her monop- oly! Why, devil take it, hang me by my feet on that nail, but can a woman love anything except a lap-dog? When she's in love all she can do is whimper and tum on the waterworks! While a man suffers and makes sacrifices, her love finds expression only in swishing her train and trying to get a firmer grip on your nose. You, madam, have the misfortune of being a woman, so you know the nature of women down to the ground. Tell me honestly, then, did you ever see a woman who was sincere, faithful, and constant? You never did! Only old women and frights are faithful and constant. You'll sooner come across a horned cat or a white woodcock than a constant woman!

Mme. Popova: Allow me to ask, then, who, in your opinion, is faithful and constant in love? Not man?

Smirnov: Yes, madam, man!

Mme. Popova: Man! With bitter laughter. Man is faithful and constant in love! That's news! Hotly. What earthly right do you have to say that? Men faithful and constant! If such is the case, let me tell you that of all the men I have ever known my late husband was the best. I loved him passionately, with my whole soul, as only a young, deep-natured woman can love. I gave him my youth, my happiness, my life, my fortune; I lived and breathed by him; I worshiped him like a heathen, and . . . and what happened? This best of men de- ceived me shamelessly at every step! After his death I found a whole drawerful of love letters in his desk, and while he was alive—I can't bear to recall it!—he would leave me alone for weeks on end; he made love to other women before my very eyes, and he was unfaithful to me; he squandered my money and mocked my feelings. And in spite of it all, I loved him and was faithful to him. More than that, he died, and I am still faithful to him, still constant. I have buried myself forever within these four walls, and I will not take off my mournbg till I go to my grave.

SMIRNOV, laughing scornfully: Mourning! I wonder who you take me for! As if I didn't know why you are masquerading in black like this and why you've buried yourself within four walls! Of course I do! It's so mys- terious, so poetic! Some cadet or some puny versifier will ride past the house, glance at the windows, and say to himself: "Here lives the mysterious Tamara who, for love of her husband, has buried herself within four walls." We know those tricks!

Mme. Popova, flaring up: What! How dare you say this to mel

Smirnov : You've buried yourself alive, but you haven't forgotten to powder your nose.

Mme. Popova: How dare you talk to me like that!

Smirnov: Please don't scream, I'm not your steward! Allow me to call a spade a spade. I'm no woman and I'm used to talking straight from the shoulder! So please don't shout!

Mme. Popova: I'm not shouting, you are shouting! Please leave me alone!

Smirnov: Pay me my money, and I'll go.

Mme. Popova: I won't give you any money.

Smirnov: No, madam, you will!

Mme. Popova: Just to spite you, I won't give you a penny. Only leave me alone!

Smirnov: I haven't the pleasure of being either your husband or your fiance, so kindly, no scenes. Sits down. I don't like them.

Mme. Popova, choking with rage: You've sat down?

Smirnov: I've sat down.

Mme. Popova: I ask you to leave.

Smirnov: Give me my money . . . aside. Oh, what a rage I'm in, what a rage!

Mme. Popova: Such impudence! I don't want to talk to you. Please get out. Pause. Are you going? No?

Smirnov: No.

Mme. Popova: No?

Smirnov: No!

Mme. Popova: Very well, then. Enter Luka.

Mme. Popova: Luka, show this gentleman out!

LuKA, approaching Smirnov: Sir, be good enough to leave when you are asked to. Don't be—

Smirnov, jumping to his feet: Shut up! Who do you think you're talking to! I'll make hash of you!

LuKA, clutching at hisheart: Mercy on us! Holy saints! Drops into an armchair. Oh, I'm sick, I'm sick! I can't get my breath!

Mme. Popova: But where is Dasha? Dasha? Shouts. Dasha! Pelageya! Dasha! Rings.

L^^: Oh, they've all gone berrying . . . There's no one here . . , I'm sick, water!

Mme. Popova, to Smirnov: Please, get out!

Smirnov: Can't you be a little more civil?

Mme. Popova, clenching her fists and rtamping her feet: You're a boor! A brute, a bully, a monster!

Smirnov: What! What did you say?

Mme. Popova: I said that you were a brute, a monster.

Smirnov, advancing upon her: Excuse me, but what right have you to insult me?

Mme. Popova: Yes, I insulted you. What of it? Do you think I'm afraid of you?

Smibnov: And you think, just because you're a poetic creature, you can insult people with impunity, eh? I challenge you!

Luka: Mercy on us! Holy saints! Water!

Smirnov : We'll shoot it out!

Mme. Popova: Just because you have big fists and bel- low like a bull, you think I'm afraid of you, eh? Bully!

Smirnov: I challenge you! I won't allow anybody to insult me, and it makes no difference to me that you're a woman, a member of the weaker sex.

Mme. Popova, trying to outshout him: Brute, brute, brute!

Smirnov: It's high time to abandon the prejudice that men alone must pay for insults. Equal rights are equal rights, devil take it! I challenge you!

Mme. Popova: You want to shoot it out? Well and good.

Smirnov: This very minute.

Mme. Popova: This very minute. I have my husband's pistols. I'll bring them directly. Walks rapidly away and turns back. What pleasure it will give me to put a bullet into your brazen head! Devil take you! Exits.

Smirnov : I'll bring her down like a duck. I'm no boy, no sentimental puppy. There's no weaker sex as far as I'm concerned.

LuKA, to Smirnov: Master, kind sir! Going down on his knees. Have pity on an old man, do me a favor—go away from here! You've frightened me to death, and now you want to fight a duel!

Smirnov, not listening to him: A duel! That's equal rights, that's emancipation! That's equality of the sexes for you! I'll bring her down as a matter of principle. But what a woman! Mimics her. "Devil take you . . . I'll put a bullet into your brazen head." What a woman! She flushed and her eyes shone! She accepted the chal- lenge! Word of honor, it's the first time in my life that I've seen one of that stripe.

Luka: Kind master, please go away, and I will pray for you always.

Smirnov: That's a woman! That's the kind I under- stand! A real woman! Not a sour-faced, spineless cry- baby, but a creature all fire and gunpowder, a cannon- baU! It's a pity I have to kill her!

LuKA, crying: Sir, kind sir, please go away!

Smirnov : I positively like her! Positively! Even though she has dimples in her cheeks, I like her! I am even ready to forgive her the debt . . . And I'm not angry any more. A remarkable woman! Enter Mme . Popova with the pistols.

Mme. Popova: Here are the pistols. But before we fight, please show me how to shoot. I never held a pistol in my hands before.

Luka: Lord, have mercy on us! I'll go and look for the gardener and the coachman. Why has this calamity be- fallen us? Exits.

Smirnov, examining the pistols: You see, there are several makes of pistols. There are Mortimers, specially made for duelling, they are fired with the percussion cap. What you have here are Smith and Wesson triple- action, central-fire revolvers with extractors. Excellent pistols! Worth ninety rubles a pair at least. You hold the revolver like this . . . A»de. The eyes, the eyes! A woman to set you on fire!

Mme. Popova: Like this?

Smirnov: Yes, like this. Then you cock the trigger . • . and you take aim like this . . . throw your head back a little! Stretch your arm out properly . . . Like this . . . Then you press this gadget with this finger, and that's all there is to it. . . . The main thing is: Keep cool and take aim slowly. . . . And try not to jerk your arm.

Mme. Popova: Very well. It's inconvenient to shoot in- doors, let's go into the garden.

SMmNOv: All right. Only I warn you, I'll fire into the air.

Mme. Popova: That's all that was wanting. Why?

Smirnov: Because . . . because . . . It's my busi- ness why.

Mme. Popova: You're scared, eh? Ah, ah, ah! No, sir, don't try to get out of it! Be so good as to follow me.

I shan't rest until I've drilled a hole in your forehead . . . this forehead that I hate so! Scared?

Smirnov: Yes, I am scared.

Mme. Popova: You're lying! Why do you refuse to fight?

SMIRNOv: Because . . . because I . .. . like you.

Mme. Popova laughing bitterly: He likes mel He dares to say that he likes me! Shows him the door. You may go.

Smirnov, silently puts down the revolver, takes his cap and walks to the door; there he stops and for half a minute the pair look at each other without a word; then he says, hesitatingly approaching Mme. Popova: Listen . . . Are you still angry? I'm in a devil of a temper myself, but you see . . . how shall I put it? • . . the thing is ... you see . . . it's this way . . . in fact . • . Shouts. Well, am I to blame if I like you? Clutches the back of his chair; it cracks and breaks. The devil! What fragile furniture you have! I like you. You understand. I've almost fallen in love.

Mme. Popova: Go away from me. I hate you.

Smirnov: God, what a woman! Never in my life have I seen anything like her! I'm lost. I'm done for. I'm trapped like a mouse.

Mme. Popova: Go away, or I'll shoot.

SMIRNOV: Shoot! You can't understand what happiness it would be to die before those enchanting eyes . . . to die of a revolver shot fired by this little velvet hand! I've lost my mind. Think a moment and decide right now, because if I leave this house, we'll never see each other again. Decide. I'm a landed gentleman, a decent fellow, with an income of ten thousand a year; I can put a bullet through a penny thrown into the air; I have a good stable. Will you be my wife?

Mme. PorovA, indignant, brandishing the revolver: We'll shoot it out! Come along! Get your pistol.

Smihnov: I've lost my mind. I don't understand any- thing. Shouts. You there! Some water!

Mme. Popova shouts: Come! Let's shoot it out!

Smirnov: I've lost my mind. I've fallen in love like a boy, like a fool. Seizes her by the hand; she cries out with pain. I love you. Goes down on his knees. I love you as I've never loved before. I jilted twelve women and was jilted by nine. But I didn't love one of them as I do you. I've gotten sentimental. I'm melting. I'm weak as water. Here I am on my knees like a fool, and I offer you my hand. It's a shame, a disgrace! For five years I've not been in love. I took a vow. And suddenly I'm bowled over, swept off my feet. I offer you my hand— yes or no? You won't? Then don't! Rises and walks rapidly to the door.

Mme. Popova: Wait a minute.

SMmNov stops: Well?

Mme. Popova: Never mind. Go . . . But no, wait a minute . . . No, go, go! I detest you! Or no ... don't go! Oh, if you knew how furious I am, how furious! Throws the revolver on the table. My fingers are cramped from holding this vile thing. Tears her hand- kerchief in a fit of temper. What are you standing there for? Get out!

Smirnov: Good-by.

Mme. Popov a: Yes, yes, go! Shouts. Where are you go- ing? Wait a minute . • . But no, go away . . . Oh, how furious I am! Don't come near me, don't come near me!

Smirnov, approaching her: I'm disgusted with myself! Falling in love like a moon-calf, going down on my knees. It gives me gooseflesh. Rudely. I love you. What 530 the portable chekhov

on earth made me fall in love with you? Tomorrow I have to pay the interest. And we've started mowing. And here are you! . . . Puts his arm around her waist. I shall never forgive myself for this.

Mme. Popova; Get away from me! Hands off! I hate you! Let's shoot it out!

A prolonged kiss. Enter LuKA with an ax, the gardener with a rake, the coachman with a ptchfork, and hired men with sticks.

LUKA, catching sight of the pair kissing: Mercy on us! Holy saints! Pauses.

Mme. Popova, dropping her eyes: Luka, tell them at the stables that Toby isn't to have any oats at all today.

1888

The Cherry Orchard

A COMEDY IN FOUR ACTS

Lubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya, a landowner.

Anya, her seventeen-year-old daughter.

Varya, her adopted daughter, twenty-two years old.

LEONID ANDREYEVICH GAYEv, MmE. RANEVSKAYA'S brother.

Yermolay Alexeyevich Lopahin, a merchant. Pyotr Sergetovich TROFIMOV, a student. Simeonov-Pishchik, a landowner. CHARLOTTA Ivanovna, a governess. Semyon Yepihodov, a clerk. DUNYASHA, a maid.

Firs [pronounced fierce], a man-servant, aged eighty- seven.

Yasha, a young valet.

A TRAMP.

STATIONMASTER, POST OFFICE ClERK, GuESTS, SERV- ANTS.

The action takes place on Mme. Ranevskaya's estate.

Act I

doors leads into Anya's room. Dawn, the sun will soon rise. It is May, the cherry trees are in blossom, but it is cold in the orchard; there is a morning frost. The windows are shut. Enter Dunyasha with a candle, and Lopahin with a book in his hand.

Lopamn: The train is in, thank God. What time is it?

DuNYASHA: Nearly two. Puts out the candle. It's light already.

Lopahin: How late is the train, anyway? Two hours at least. Yawns and stretches. I'm a fine one! What a fool I've made of myself! I came here on purpose to meet them at the station, and then I went and overslept. I fell asleep in my chair. How annoying! You might have waked me . . .

Dunyasha: I thought you'd left. Listens. I think they're coming!

R O O M that is still called the nursery. One of the

LoPAinN, listens: No, they've got to get the luggage, and one thing and another . . . Pause. Lubov An- dreyevna spent five years abroad, I don't know what she's like now . . . She's a fine person—lighthearted, simple. I remember when I was a boy of fifteen, my poor father—he had a shop here in the village then— punched me in the face with his fist and made my nose bleed. We'd come into the yard, I don't know what for, and he'd had a drop too much. Lubov Andreyevna, I remember her as if it were yesterday—she was still young and so slim—led me to the wash-basin, in this very room . . . in the nursery. "Don't cry, little peas- ant," she said, "it'll heal in time for your wedding. . . ."

Pause. Little peasant . . . my father was a peasant, it's true, an^d here I am in a white waistcoat an^d yellow shoes. A pig in a pastry shop, you might say. It's true I'm rich, I've got a lot of money. . . . But when you look at it closely, I'm a peasant through an^d through. Pages the book. Here I've been reading this book an^d I ^di^dn't un^derstan^d a wor^d of it. . . . I was rea^ding it an^d fell asleep . . . . Pause.

Dunyasha: An^d the ^dogs were awake all night, they feel that their masters are coming.

Lopahin: Dunyasha, why are you so—

Dunyasha: My hands are trembling. I'm going to faint.

LopAmN: You're too soft, Dunyasha. You ^dress like a lady, and look at the way you do your hair. That's not right. One should remember one's place.

Enter Yepihodov with a bouquet; he wears a ;acket and highly polished boots that squeak badly. He drops the bouquet as he comes in.

YEPIHoOOv, picking up the bouquet: Here, the gar^dener sent these, sai^d you're to put them in the ^dining room. Handsnds the bouquet to Dunyasha.

Lopahin: And bring me some kvass.

DuNYASHA: Yes, sir. Exits.

YEPiHOOOv: There's a frost this morning—three ^de- grees below—an^d yet the cherries are all in blossom. I cannot approve of our climate. Sighs. I cannot. Our climate ^does not activate properly. An^d, Yermolay Alex- eyevich, allow me to make a further remark. The other ^day I bought myself a pair of boots, an^d I make bol^d to assure you, they squeak so that it is really intolerable. What should I grease them with?

LOPAHIN: Oh, get out! I'm fe^d up with you.

YEPiHOOOv: Every ^day I meet with misfortune. And I don't complain, I've got use^d to it, I even smile.

Dunyasha enters, hands Lopahin the kvass.

Yepihodov : I am leaving. Stumbles against a chair, which falls over. Therc! Triumphantly, as it were. There again, you see what sort of circumstance, pardon the ex- pression. . . . It is absolutely phenomenal! Exits.

DuNYASHA: You know, Yermolay Alexeyevich, I must tell you, Yepihodov has proposed to me.

Lopahin: Ahl

DUNYASHA: I simply don't know . . . he's a quiet man, but sometimes when he starts talking, you can't make out what he means. He speaks nicely—and it's touching—but you can't understand it. I sort of like him though, and he is crazy about me. He's an unlucky man . . . every day something happens to him. They tease him about it here . • • they call him, Two-and- Twenty Troubles.

Lopahin, listening: There! I think they're coming.

DuNYASHA: They are coming! What's the matter me? I feel cold all over.

Lopahin: They really are coming. Let's go and meet them. Will she recognize me? We haven't seen each other for five years.

Dunyasha, in a flutter: I'm going to faint this minute. • • . Oh, I'm going to faint!

Two carriages are heard driving up to the house. Lop^bn and DuNYASHA go out quickly. The stage is left empty. There is a noise in the adjoining rooms. FIRS, who had driven to the station to meet Lubov ^otre- yevna Ranevskaya, crosses the stage hurriedly, leaning on a stick. He is wearing an old-fashioned livery and a tall hat. He mutters to himself indistinctly. The hubbub off-stage increases. A Voice: "Come, let's go this way." Enter Lubov Andreyevna, Anya and Charlo^ta Iva- novna, with a pet dog on a leash, all in traveling dresses; Varya, wearing a coat and kerchief; Gayev, Simeonov-

PISHCHIK, Lopahin, D^^ASHA with a bag and an um- brella, servants with luggage. All walk across the room.

Anya: Let's go this way. Do you remember what room this is, mamma?

Mme. RANEVSKAYA, joyfully, through her tears: The nursery!

Varya: How cold it is! My hands are numb. To M^. Ranevskaya. Your rooms are just the same as they were mamma, the white one and the violet.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: The nursery! My darling, lovely room! I slept here when I was a child . . . Cries. And here I am, like a child again! Kisses her brother and Varya, and then her brother again. Varya's just the same as ever, like a nun. And I recognized Dunyasha. Kisses DUNYASHA.

Gayev: The train was two hours late. What do you think of that? What a way to manage things!

CHARLOTTA, to PiSHCIDK: My dog eats nuts, too.

Pishc^k, in amazement: You don't say so!

All go out, except ^ota and D^roASHA.

DUNYASHA: We've been waiting for you for hours. Takes A.NYA's hat and coat.

Anya: I didn't sleep on the train for four nights and now I'm frozen . . •

DUNYASHA: It was Lent when you left; there was snow and frost, and now . . • My darling! Laughs and kisses her. I have been waiting for you, my sweet, my darling! But I must tell you something ... I can't put it off another minute . . .

Anya, listlessly: What now?

DuNYASHA: The clerk, Yepihodov, proposed to me, just after Easter.

ANYA: There you are, at it again . . . Straightening her hair. I've lost all my hairpins She is staggering with exhaustion.

DuNYASHA: Really, I don't lmow what to think. He loves me—he loves me so!

^ota, looking towards the door of her room, tenderly: My room, my windows, just as though I'd never been away. I'm home! Tomorrow morning I'll get up and run into the orchard. Oh, if I could only get some sleep. I didn't close my eyes during the whole journey— I was so anxious.

Dunyasha: Pyotr Sergeyevich came the day before yesterday.

ANYA, joyfully: Petyal

DUNYASHA: He's asleep in the bath-house. He has settled there. He said he was afraid of being in the way. Looks at her watch. I should wake him, but Miss Varya told me not to. "Don't you wake him," she said.

Enter Varya with a bunch of keys at her belt.

VARYA: Dunyasha, coffee, and be quick . . . Mam- ma's asking for coffee.

DuNYASHA: In a minute. Exits.

Varya: Well, thank God, you've come. You're home again. Fondling Anya. My darling is here again. My pretty one is back.

ANYA: Oh, what I've been through!

Varya: I can imagine.

^ota: When we left, it was Holy Week, it was cold then, and all the way Charlotta chattered and did her tricks. Why did you have to saddle me with Charlotta?

VARYA: You couldn't have traveled all alone, darling —at seventeen!

ANYA: We got to Paris, it was cold there, snowing. My French is dreadful. Mamma lived on the fifth floor; I went up there, and found all kinds of Frenchmen, ladies, an old priest with a book. The place was full of tobacco smoke, and so bleak. Suddenly I felt sorry for mamma, so sorry, I took her head in my arms and hugged her and couldn't let go of her. Afterwards mamma kept fondling me and crying . . .

Varya, through tears: Don't speak of it ... don't.

Anya: She had already sold her villa at Mentone, she had nothing left, nothing. I hadn't a kopeck left either, we had only just enough to get home. And mamma wouldn't understand! When we had dinner at the sta- tions, she always ordered the most expensive dishes, and tipped the waiters a whole ruble. Charlotta, too. And Yasha kept ordering, too—it was simply awful. You know Yasha's mamma's footman now, we brought him here with us.

Varya: Yes, I've seen the blackguard.

Anya: Well, tell me—have you paid the interest?

Varya: How could we?

ANYA: Good heavens, good heavens!

Varya: In August the estate will be put up for sale.

ANYA: My God!

Lopamn peeps in at the door and bleats.

Lopahin: Meh-h-h. Disappears.

Varya, through tears: What I couldn't do to him! Shakes her fist threateningly.

Anya, embracing Varya, gently: Varya, has he pro- posed to you? Varya shakes her head. But he loves you. Why don't you come to an understanding? What are you waiting for?

Varya: Oh, I don't think anything will ever come of it. He's too busy, he has no time for me . . . pays no attention to me. I've washed my hands of him—I can't bear the sight of him. They all talk about our getting married, they all congratulate me—and all the time there's really nothing to it—it's all like a dream. In an- other tone. You have a new brooch—like a bee.

Anya, sadly: Mamma bought it. She goes into her own room and speaks gaily like a child. And you know, in Paris I went up in a balloon.

Varya: My darling's home, my pretty one is back! DuNYASHA returns with the coffee-pot and prepares coffee. Varya stands at the door of Akya's room. All day long, darling, as I go about the house, I keep dream- ing. If only we could marry you off to a rich man, I should feel at ease. Then I would go into a convent, and afterwards to Kiev, to Moscow • . . I would spend my life going from one holy place to another . . . I'd go on and on . . . What a blessing that would bel

Anya: The birds are singing in the orchard. What time is it?

Varya: It must be after two. Time you were asleep, darling. Goes into Anya's room. What a blessing that would be!

YASHA enters with a plaid and a traveling bag, crosses the stage.

Yasha, finically: May I pass this way, please?

DuNYASHA: A person could hardly recognize you, Yasha. Your stay abroad has certainly done wonders for you.

YAsHA: Hm-m . . . and who are you?

DUNYASHA: When you went away I was that high— Indicating with her hand. I'm Dunyasha—Fyodor Ko- zoyedev's daughter. Don't you remember?

YASHA: Hm! What a peach! He looks round and em- braces her. She cries out and drops a saucer. YAsHA leaves quickly.

Varya, in the doorway, in a tone of annoyance: What's going on here?

DuNYASHA, through tears: I've broken a saucer.

Varya: Well, that's good luck.

Anya, coming out of her room: We ought to mamma that Petya's here.

Varya: I left orders not to wake him.

^ota, musingly: Six years ago father died. A month later brother Grisha was drowned in the river. . . . Such a pretty little boy he was—only seven. It was more than mamma could bear, so she went away, went away without looking back . . . Shudders. How well I un- derstand her, if she only knew! Pauses. And Petya Tro^fi- mov was Grisha's tutor, he may remind her of it all . . .

Enter Fis, wearing a jacket and a white waistcoat. He goes up to the coffee-pot.

Firs, anxiously: The mistress will have her coffee here. Puts on white gloves. Is the coffee ready? Sternly, to D^tcasha. Here, you! And where's the cream?

D^tcasha: Oh, my God! Exits quickly.

Firs, fussing over the coffee-pot: Hah! the addlehead! Mutters to himself. Home from Paris. And the old mas- ter used to go to Paris too . . . by carriage. Laughs.

Varya: What is it, Firs?

Firs: What is your pleasure, Miss? Joyfully. My mis- tress has come home, and I've seen her at last! Now I can die. Weeps with joy.

Enter Mme. RANEVSKAYA, GAYEV, and SIMEONOv- Pishc^tc. The latter is wearing a tight-waisted, pleated coat of fine cloth, and full trousers. Gayev, as he comes in, goes through the motions of a billiard player with his arms and body.

M^. RANEVSKAYA: Let's see, how does it go? YeUow ball in the corner! Bank shot in the side pocket!

GAYEV: I'll tip it in the corner! There was a ^rne, sister, when you and I used to sleep in this very room, and now I'm fifty-one, strange as it may seem.

lop^hn: Yes, time ^flies.

540 THE portable chekhov

GAYEV: Who?

Lopahin: I say, time flies.

Gayev: It smells of patchouli here.

Anya: I'm going to bed. Good night, mamma. Kisses her mother.

Mme. Ranevskaya: My darling child! Kisses her hands. Are you happy to be home? I can't come to my senses.

Anya : Good night, uncle.

GAYEv, kissing her face and hands: God bless you, how like your mother you are! To his sister. At her age, Luba, you were just like her.

Anya shakes hands with Lopahin and Pishchik, then goes out, shutting the door behind her.

Mme. Ranevskaya: She's very tired.

PISHCHIK: Well, it was a long journey.

Varya, to LopAHiN and Pishc^k: How about it, gentlemen? It's past two o'clock—isn't it time for you to go?

Mme. RANEVSKAYA, laughs: You're just the same as ever, Varya. Draws her close and kisses her. I'll have my coffee and then we'll all go. Fis puts a small cushion under her feet. Thank you, my dear. I've got used to coffee. I drink it day and night. Thanks, my dear old man. Kisses him.

Varya: I'd better see if all the luggage has been brought in. Exits.

Mme. Ranevskaya: Can it really be I sitting here? Laughs. I feel like dancing, waving my arms about. Covers her face with her hands. But maybe I am dream- ing! God knows I love my country, I love it tenderly; I couldn't look out of the window in the train, I kept cry- ing so. Through tears. But I must have my coffee. Thank you, Firs, thank you, dear old man. I'm so happy that you're still alive.

FIRs: Day before yester^day.

Gayev: He's har^d of hearing.

Lopa^w: I must go soon, I'm leaving for Kharkov about five o'clock. How annoying! I'd like to have a good look at you, talk to you • • . You're just as splen- did as ever.

PisHCHIX, breathing heavily: She's even better-look- ing. . . . Dresse^d in the latest Paris fashion. • • • Per- ish my carriage an^d aH its four wheels. . . .

Lopa^^: Your brother, Leoni^d An^dreyevich, says I'm a vulgarian an^d an exploiter. But it's aH the same to me—let him talk. I only want you to trust me as you use^d to. I want you to look at me with your touching, won^derful eyes, as you use^ to. Dear God! My father was a serf of your father's an^d gran^dfather's, but you, you yourself, did so much for me once . . . so much . • . that I've forgotten all about that; I love you as though you were my sister—even more.

Mme. Ranevskaya: I can't sit still, I simply can't. Jumps up and walks about in violent agitation. This joy is too much for me. . . . Laugh at me, I'm si11y! My o^ ^darling bookcase! My ^darling table! Kisses it.

Gayev: While you were away, nurse died.

Mme. Ranevskaya, sits down and takes her coffee: Yes, Go^d rest her soul; they wrote me about it.

Gayev: And Anastasy is dead. Petrushka Kossoy has left me an^d has gone into town to work for the police inspector. Takes a box of sweets out of his pocket and begins to suck one.

pkhc^tc: My daughter Dashenka sends her regar^ds.

LOPAmN: I'^d like to tell you something very pleasant —cheering. Glancing at his watch. I am leaving ^di- rectly. There isn't Jnuch time to talk. But I wi11 put it in a few wor^ds. As you know, your cherry orchar^d is to ^be sol^d to pay your ^de^bts. The sale is to be on the twenty- second of August; but don't you worry, my dear, you may sleep in peace; there is a way out. Here is my plan. Give me your attention! Your estate is only fifteen miles from the town; the railway runs close by it; and if the cherry orchard and the land along the river bank were cut up into lots and these leased for summer cottages, you would have an income of at least 25,000 rubles a year out of it.

Gayev: Excuse me. . • . What nonsense.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: I don't quite understand you, Yermolay Alexeyevich.

LoPAmN: You will get an annual rent of at least ten rubles per acre, and if you advertise at once, I'll give you any guarantee you like that you won't have a square foot of ground left by autumn, all the lots will be snapped up. In short, congratulations, you're saved. The location is splendid—by that deep river. . . . Only, of course, the ground must be cleared • . • all the old buildings, for instance, must be torn down, and this house, too, which is useless, and, of course, the old cherry orchard must be cut down.

Mme. RANEvsKAYA: Cut down? My dear, forgive me, but you don't know what you're talking about. If there's one thing that's interesting—indeed, remarkable—in the whole province, it's precisely our cherry orchard.

LoPAmN: The only remarkable thing about this orchard is that it's a very large one. There's a crop of cherries every other year, and you can't do anything with them; no one buys them.

Gayev: This orchard is even mentioned in the En- cyclopedia.

Lopahin, glancing at his watch: If we can't think of a way out, if we don't come to a decision, on the twenty- second of August the cherry orchard and the whole estate will be sold at auction. Make up your minds! There's no other way out—I swear. None, none.

Fms: In the old days, forty or fifty years ago, the cherries were dried, soaked, pickled, and made into jam. and we used to—

Gayev: Keep still, Firs.

FIRS: And the dried cherries would be shipped by the cartload. It meant a lot of money! And in those days the dried cherries were soft and juicy, sweet. fragrant. . . • They knew the way to do it, then.

M^. RANEVSKAYA: And why don't they do it that way now?

FIRs: They've forgotten. Nobody remembers it.

PISHCHIK, to Mme. RANEVSKAYA: What's doing in Paris? Eh? Did you eat frogs there?

M^. RANEVSKAYA: I ate crocodiles.

PISHCHIK: Just imagine!

LOPAHIN: There used to be only landowners and peasants in the country, but now these summer people have appeared on the scene. . . . All the towns, even the small ones, are surrounded by these summer cot- tages; and in another twenty years, no doubt, the sum- mer population will have grown enormously. Now the summer resident only drinks tea on his porch, but maybe he'll take to working his acre, too, and then your cherry orchard will be a rich, happy, luxuriant place.

GAYEV, indignantly: Poppycock!

Enter Varya and YASHA.

Varya: There are two telegrams for you, mamma dear. Picks a key from the bunch at her belt and noisily opens an old-fashioned bookcase. Here they are.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: They're from Paris. Tears them up without reading them. I'm through with Paris.

GAYEv: Do you know, Luba, how old this bookcas^ is? Last week I pulled out the bottom drawer and there I found the date burnt in it. It was made exactly a hun- D.red years ago. Think of that! We could celebrate its centenary. True, it's an inanimate object, but neverthe- less, a bookcase , . .

Pishchix, amazed: A hundred years! Just imagine!

GAYEv: Yes. Tapping it. That's something. . . . Dear, honored bookcase, hail to you who for more than a cen- tury have served the glorious ideals of goodness and justice! Your silent summons to fruitful toil has never weakened in all those hundred years (through tears), sustaining, through successive generations of our family, courage and faith in a better future, and fostering in us ideals of goodness and social consciousness. . • . Pauses.

LOPAHIN: Yes , . .

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: You haven't changed a bit, Leonid.

Gayev, somewhat embarrassed: I'll play it off the red in the corner! Tip it in the side pocket!

Lopahin, looking at his watch: Well, it's time for me ^to g° . . .

Yasha, handing a pill box to Mme. R^^VSKAYA: Per- haps you'll take your pills now.

Pishchik: One shouldn't take medicines, dearest lady, they do neither harm nor good. . . . Give them here, my valued friend. Takes the pill box, pours the pills into his palm, blows on them, puts them in his mouth, and washes them down with some kvass. There!

Mme. RANEVSKAYA, frightened: You must be mad!

PiSHCHIK: I've taken all the pills.

Lopaidn: What a glutton!

All laugh.

Firs: The gentleman visited us in Easter week, ate half a bucket of pickles, he did . . . Mumbles.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: What's he saying?

Varya: He's been mumbling like that for the last three years—we're used to it.

Yasha: His declining years!

CHARLOTTA Ivanovna, very thin, tightly laced, dressed in white, a lorgnette at her waist, crosses the stage.

Lop^bn: Forgive me, Charlotta Ivanovna, Tve not had time to greet you. Tries to kiss her hand.

Charlotta, pulling away her hand: If I let you kiss my hand, you'll be wanting to kiss my elbow next, and then my shoulder.

LopAHiN: I've no luck today. All laugh. Charlotta Ivanovna, show us a trick.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: Yes, Charlotta, do a trick for us.

CHARLOTTA: I don't see the need. I want to sleep. Exits.

Lopa^^: In thiee weeks we'll meet again. Kisses Mme. Ranevskaya's hand. Good-by till then. Time's up. To Gayev: Bye-bye. Kisses Pishchik. Bye-bye. Shakes hands with Varya, then with Firs and Yasha. I hate to leave. To Mme. Ranevskaya: If you make up your mind about the cottages, let me know; I'll get you a loan of 50,000 rubles. Think it over seriously.

Varya, crossly: Will you never go!

Lop^mN: I'm going, I'm going. Exits.

Gayev: The vulgarian. But, excuse me . . . Varyrt's going to marry him, he's Varya's fiance.

Varya: You talk too much, uncle dear.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: Well, Varya, it would make me happy. He's a good man.

PiSHcmK: Yes, one must admit, he's a most estimable man. And my Dashenka . . . she too says that . . . she says . . . lots of things. Snores; but wakes up at once. All the same, my valued friend, could you oblige

me . . . with a loan of 240 rubles? I must pay the in-

terest on the mortgage tomorrow.

Varya, affirmed: We can't, we can't!

Mme. ^^revsKAYA: I really haven't any money.

PISHCHIK: It'll turn up. Laughs. I never lose hope, I hought everything was lost, that I was done for, when lo and behold, the railway ran through my land . . . and I was paid for it. . . . And something else will tum up again, if not today, then tomorrow . . . Da- shenka will win two hundred thousand . . . she's got a lottery ticket.

Mme. Ranevskaya: I've had my coffee, now let's go to bed.

fim, brushes off Gayev; admonishingly: You've got the wrong trousers on again. What am I to do with you?

Varya, softly: Anya's asleep. Gently opens the win- dow. The sun's up now, it's not a bit cold. Look, mamma dear, what wonderful trees. And heavens, what air! The starlings are singing!

Gayev, opens the other window: The orchard is all white. You've not forgotten it? Luba? That's the long alley that runs straight, straight as an arrow; how it shines on moonlight nights, do you remember? You've not forgotten?

Mme. Ranevskaya, looking out of the window into the orchard: Oh, my childhood, my innocent childhood. I used to sleep in this nursery—I used to look out into the orchard, happiness waked with me every morning, the orchard was just the same then . . . nothing has changed. Laughs with ;oy. All, all white! Oh, my or- chard! After the dark, rainy autumn and the cold win- ter, you are young again, and full of happiness, the heavenly angels have not left you . . . If I could free my chest and my shoulders from this rock that weighs on me, if I could only forget the past!

Gayev: Yes, and the orchard will be sold to pay our debts, strange as it may seem. . . .

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: Look! There is our poor mother walking in the orchard . • . aU in white . • . Laughs with ;oy. It is she!

Gayev: Where?

VARYA: What are you saying, mamma dear!

Mme. Ranevskaya: There's no one there, I just im- agined it. To the right, where the path turns towards the arbor, there's a little white tree, leaning over, that looks like a woman . . .

Trofimov enters, wearing a shabby tiudent's uni- form and spectacles.

M^. RANEVSKAYA: What an amazing orchard! White masses of blossom, the blue sky . . .

Trofimov: Lubov Andreyevna! She looks round at him. I just want to pay my respects to you, then I'U leave at once. Kisses her hand ardently. I was told to wait until morning, but I hadn't the patience Mme. RANEVSKAYA looks at him, perplexed.

Varya, through tears: This is Petya Trofimov.

TROFIMOV: Petya Trofimov, formerly your Grisha's tutor. . . . Can I have changed so much? Mme. Ra- nevskaya embraces him and weeps quietly.

GAYEV, embarrassed: Don't, don't, Luba.

Varya, crying: I told you, Petya, to wait until to- morrow.

M^. RANEVSKAYA: My Grisha . . . my little boy . . . Grisha . . . my son.

Varya: What can one do, mamma dear, it's God's will.

Trofimov, softly, through tears: There . • . there.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA, weeping quietly: My little boy was lost . . . drowned. Why? Why, my friend? More quietly. Anya's asleep in there, and here I am talking so loudly . . . making all this noise. . . . But tell me,

Petya, why do you look so badly? Why have you aged

so?

tnofimov: A mangy master, a peasant woman in the train called me.

Mme. Ranevskaya: You were just a boy then, a dear little student, and now your hair's thin—and you're wearing glasses! Is it possible you're still a student? Goes towards the door.

tnofimov: I suppose I'm a perpetual student.

Mme. Ranevskaya, kisses her brother, then Varya: Now, go to bed . . . You have aged, too, Leonid.

pishcink, follows her: So now we turn in. Oh, my gout! I'm staying the night here . . . Lubov Andre- yevna, my angel, tomorrow morning. . . . I do need 240 rubles.

Gayev: He keeps at it.

pisiichik: I'll pay it back, dear . . . it's a trifling sum.

Mme. r^^vskaya: All right, Leonid will give it to you. Give it to him, Leonid.

Gayev: Me give it to him! That's a good one!

Mme. ranevskaya: It can't be helped. Give it to him! He needs it. He'll pay it back.

\hie. Ranevskaya, tnofimov, Pishchik, and Frns go out; Gayev, Varya, and Yasia remain.

GAYEv: Sister hasn't got out of the habit of throwing money around. To YaSHA. Go away, my good fellow, you smell of the barnyard.

Yasha, with a grin: And you, Leonid Andreyevich, are just the same as ever.

Gayev: Who? To Varya: What did he say?

Varya, to YaSHA: Your mother's come from the vil- lage; she's been sitting in the servants' room since yes- terday, waiting to see you.

YASHA: Botheration!

VARYA: You should be ashamed of yourself!

Yasha: She's all I needed! She could have come to- morrow. Exits.

Varya: Mamma is just the same as ever; she hasn't changed a bit. If she had her own way, she'd keep noth- ing for herself.

Gayev: Yes . . . Pauses. If a great many remedies are offered for some disease, it means it is incurable; I keep thinking and racking my brains; I have many remedies, ever so many, and that really means none. It would be fine if we came in for a legacy; it would be fine if we married off our Anya to a very rich man; or we might go to Yaroslavl and try our luck with our aunt, the Countess. She's very, very rich, you know . . .

Varya, weeping: If only God would help us!

Gayev: Stop bawling. Aunt's very rich, but she doesn't like us. In the first place, sister married a lawyer who was no nobleman . . . Anya appears in the door- way. She married beneath her, and it can't be said that her behavior has been very exemplary. She's good, kind, sweet, and I love her, but no matter what extenuating circumstances you may adduce, there's no denying that she has no morals. You sense it in her least gesture.

VARYA, in a whisper: Anya's in the doorway.

GAYEv: Who? Pauses. It's queer, something got into my right eye—my eyes are going back on nie. . . . And on Thursday, when I was in the circuit court—

Enter ^^a.

Varya: Why aren't you asleep, Anya?

Anya: I can't get to sleep, I just can't.

Gayev: My little pet! Kisses Anya's face and hands. My child! Weeps. You are not my niece, you're my angel! You're everything to me. Believe me, believe—

Anya: I believe you, uncle. Everyone loves you and respects you . . . but, uncle dear, you must keep stiU. . . . You must. What were you saying just now about my mother? Your sister? What made you say that?

GAYEv: Yes; yes . . . Covers his face with her hand. Really, that was awful! Good Godl Heaven help me! Just now I made a speech to the bookcase . . . so stupid! And only after I was through, I saw how stupid it was.

Varya: It's true, uncle dear, you ought to keep stiU. Just don't talk, that's all.

^ota: If you could only keep stiU, it would make things easier for you too.

Gayev: I'll keep still. Kisses ANYA's and Varya's handsnds. I will. But now about business. On Thursday I was in court; well, there were a number of us there, and we began talking of one thing and another, and this and that, and do you know, I believe it will be possible to raise a loan on a promissory note, to pay the interest at the bank.

Varya: If only God would help us! Gayev: On Tuesday I'll go and see about it again. To Varya. Stop bawling. To Anya. Your mamma will talk to Lopahin, and he, of course, will not refuse her . . . and as soon as you're rested, you'll go to Yaroslavl to the Countess, your great-aunt. So we'll be working in three directions at once, and the thing is in the bag. We'll pay the interest—I'm sure of it. Puts a candy in his mouth. I swear on my honor, I swear by anything you like, the estate shan't be sold. Excitedly. I swear by my own hap- piness! Here's my hand on it, you can call me a swin- dler and a scoundrel if I let it come to an auction! I swear by my whole being.

^ota, relieved and quite happy again: How good you are, uncle, and how clever! Embraces him. Now I'm at peace, quite at peace, I'm happy.

Enter FiRS.

FIRS, reproachfully: Leonid Andreyevich, have you no fear of God? When are you going to bed?

Gayev: Directly, directly. Go away, Firs, I'll . . . yes, I will undress myself. Now, children, 'nightie- 'nightie. We'll consider details tomorrow, but now go to sleep. Kisses Anya and Varya. I am a man of the 'Eighties; they have nothing good to say of that period nowadays. Nevertheless, in the course of my life I have suffered not a little for my convictions. It's not for noth- ing that the peasant loves me; one should know the peasant; one should know from which—

Anya: There you go again, uncle.

Varya: Uncle dear, be quiet.

FIRS, angrily: Leonid Andreyevich!

Gayev: I'm coming, I'm coming! Go to bed! Double bank shot in the side pocket! Here goes a clean shot . . .

Exits, Fms hobbling after him.

^ota: I am at peace now. I don't want to go to Yaro- slavl—I don't like my great-aunt, but still, I am at peace, thanks to uncle. Sits down.

Varya: We must get some sleep. I'm going now. While you were away something unpleasant happened. In the old servants' quarters there are only the old peo- ple, as you know; Yefim, Polya, Yevstigney, and Karp, too. They began letting all sorts of rascals in to spend the night. ... I didn't say anything. Then I heard they'd been spreading a report that I gave them nothing but dried peas to eat—out of stinginess, you know . . • and it was all Yevstigney's doing. . . . All right, I thought, if that's how it is, I thought, just wait. I sent for Yevstigney. . . . Yawns. He comes. . . . "How's this, Yevstigney?" I say, "You fool . . ." Looking at Anya. Anichkal Pauses. She's asleep. Putsher arm around

Anya. Come to your little bed. . . . Come . . • Leads her. My darling has fallen asleep. • . . Come.

They go out. Far away beyond the orchard a shepherd is piping. Trofimov crosses the stage and, seeing Varya and ANYA, stands still.

Varya: Sh! She's asleep . • • asleep . . . Come, darling.

Anya, softly, half-asleep: I'm so tired. Those bells . . . uncle . . . dear. . . • Mamma and uncle . . .

Varya: Come, my precious, come along. They go into Anya's room.

Trofimov, with emotion: My sunshine, my spring!

Act II

MEADOW. An old, long-abandoned, lopsided

little chapel; near it, a well, large slabs, which had apparently once served as tombstones, and an old bench. In the background, the road to the Gayev estate. To one side poplars loom darkly, where the cherry or- chard begins. In the distance a row of telegraph poles, and far off, on the horizon, the faint outline of a large city which is seen only in fine, clear weather. The sun will soon be setting. Charlotta, Yasha, and Dunyasha are seated on the bench. Yepihodov stands near and plays a guitar. All are pensive. Charlotca wears an old peaked cap. She has taken a gun from her shoulder and is straightening the buckle on the strap.

CHARLO"ITA, musingly: I haven't a real passport, I don't know how old I am, and I always feel that I am very young. When I was a little girl, my father and mother used to go from fair to fair and give perform- ances, very good ones. And I used to do the salto mortale, and all sorts of other tricks. And when papa and mamma died, a German lady adopted me and be- gan to educate me. Very good. I grew up and became a governess. But where I come from and who I am, I don't know. . . . Who were my parents? Perhaps they weren't even married . ... I don't know. . . . Takes a cucumber out of her pocket and eats it. I don't know a thing. Pause. One wants so much to talk, ^%and there isn't anyone to talk to. . . . I haven't anybody.

Yepihodov, plays the guitar and sings: "What care I for the jarring world? What's friend or foe to me? . . ." How agreeable it is to play the mandolin.

Dunyasha: That's a guitar, not a mandolin. Looks in a hand mirror and powders her face.

YEPUJODOV: To a madman in love it's a mandolin. Sings: "Would that the heart were warmed by the fire of mutual love!" Yasha joins in.

CHARLOTTA: How abominably these people sing. Pfui! Like jackals!

DUNYASHA, to YASHA: How wonderful it must be though to have stayed abroad!

Yasha: Ah, yes, of course, I cannot but agree with you there. Yawns and lights a cigar.

Yepihodov: Naturally. Abroad, everything has long since achieved full perplexion.

YASHA: That goes without saying.

YEPIHODOV : I'm a cultivated man, I read all kinds of remarkable books. And yet I can never make out what direction I should take, what is it that I want, properly speaking. Should I live, or should I shoot myself, prop- erly speaking? Nevertheless, I always carry a revolver about me. . . . Here it is . . . Shows revolver.

CHARLOTTA: I've finished. I'm going. Puts the gun over her shoulder. You are a very clever man, Yepiho- dov, and a very terrible one; women must be crazy about you. Br-r-rl Starts to go. These clever men are all so stupid; there's no one for me to talk to . . . always alone, alone, I haven't a soul . . . and who I am, and why I am, nobody knows. Exits unhurriedly.

YEPIHooov: Properly speaking and letting other sub- jects alone, I must say regarding myself, among other things, that fate treats me mercilessly, like a storm treats a small boat. If I am mistaken, let us say, why then do I wake up this morning, and there on my chest is a spider of enormous dimensions . . . like this . . . in- dicates with both hands. Again, I take up a pitcher of kvass to have a drink, and in it there is something un- seemly to the highest degree, something like a cock- roach. Pause. Have you read Buckle? Pause. I wish to have a word with you, Avdotya Fyodorovna, if I may trouble you.

DuNYASHA: Well, go ahead.

YEPIHoDOv: I wish to speak with you alone. Sighs.

DUNYASHA, embarrassed: Very well. Only first bring me my little cape. You'll find it near the wardrobe. It's rather damp here.

YEPIHODOv: Certainly, ma'am; I will fetch it, ma'am. Now I know what to do with my revolver. Takes the guitar and goes off playing it.

Yasha: Two-and-Twenty Troubles! An awful fool, between you and me. Yawns.

DuNYASHA: I hope to God he doesn't shoot himself! Pause. I've become so nervous, I'm always fretting. I was still a little girl when I was taken into the big house, I am quite unused to the simple life now, and my hands are white, as white as a lady's. I've become so soft, so delicate, so refined, I'm afraid of everything. It's so terrifying; and if you deceive me, Yasha, I don't know what will happen to my nerves. Yasha kisses her.

Yasha: You're a peach! Of course, a girl should never forget herself; and what I dislike more than anything is when a girl don't behave properly.

DuNYASHA: I've fallen passionately in love with you; you're educated—you have something to say about everything. Pause.

Yasha, yawns: Yes, ma'am. Now the way I look at it, if a girl loves someone, it means she is immoral. Pause. It's agreeable smoking a cigar in the fresh air. Listens. Someone's coming this way . . . It's our madam and the others. DUNYASHA embraces him impulsively. You go home, as though you'd been to the river to bathe; go by the little path, or else they'll run into you and sus- pect me of having arranged to meet you here. I can't stand that sort of thing.

Dunyasha, coughing softly: Your cigar's made my head ache. Exits. Yasha remains standing near the chapel. Enter Mme. Ranevskaya, Gayev, and Lopahin.

Lopahin: You must make up your mind once and for all—there's no time to lose. It's quite a simple question, you know. Do you agree to lease your land for sum- mer cottages or not? Answer in one word, yes or no; only one word!

Mme. Ranevskaya: Who's been smoking such abom- inable cigars here? Sits down.

Gayev: Now that the railway line is so near, it's made things very convenient. Sits down. Here we've been able to have lunch in town. Yellow ball in the side pocket! I.feel like going into the house and playing just one game.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: You can do that later.

LOPAIDN: Only one word! Imploringly. Do give me an answer!

Gayev, yawning: Who?

Mme. Ranevskaya, looks into her purse: Yesterday

I had a lot of money and now my purse is almost empty. My poor Varva tries to economize by feeding us just milk soup; in the kitchen the old people get nothing but dried peas to cat, while I squander money thoughtlessly. Drops the purse, scattering gold pieces. You see there they go . . . Shotvs vexation.

Yasha: Allow me—l'll pick them up. Picks up the money.

Mme. Ranevskaya: Be so kind, Yasha. And why did I go to lunch in town? That nasty restaurant, with its music and the tablecloth smelling of soap . . . Why drink so much, Leonid? Why eat so much? Why talk so much? Today again you talked a lot, and all so inap- propriately about the 'Seventies, about the decadents. And to whom? Talking to waiters about decadents!

Lopahin: Yes.

Gayev, waving his hand: I'm incorrigible; that's ob- vious. Irritably, to YAsHA. Why do you keep dancing about in front of me?

Yasha, laughs: I can't hear your voice without laugh- ⁱⁿg^—

Gayev: Either he or I—

Mme. Ranevskaya: Go away, Yasha; run along.

Yasia, handing Mme. Ranevskaya her purse: I'm going, at once. Hardly able to suppress his laughter. This minute. Exits.

LopAHiN: That rich man, Deriganov, wants to buy your estate. They say he's coming to the auction himself.

Mme. Ranevskaya: Where did you hear that?

Lopahjn: That's what they are saying in town.

Gayev: Our aunt in Yaroslavl has promised to help; but when she will send the money, and how much, no one knows.

Lopahin: How much will she send? A hundred thou- sand? Two hundred?

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: Oh, well, ten or fifteen thousand; and we'll have to be grateful for that.

LopAHiN: Forgive me, but such frivolous people as you are, so queer and unbusinesslike—I never met in my life. One tells you in plain language that your estate is up for sale, and you don't seem to take it in.

Mme. Ranevskaya: What are we to do? Tell us what to do.

Lopahin: I do tell you, every day; every day I say the same thing! You must lease the cherry orchard and the land for summer cottages, you must do it and as soon as possible—right away. The auction is close at hand. Please understand! Once you've decided to have the cottages, you can raise as much money as you like, and you're saved.

Mme. Ranevskaya: Cottages—summer people—for- give me, but it's all so vulgar.

Gayev: I agree with you absolutely.

LopAHiN: I shall either burst into tears or scream or faint! I can't stand it! You've worn me out! To Gayev. You're an old woman!

Gayev: Who?

LopAHiN: An old woman! Gets up to go.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA, alarmed: No, don't go! Please stay, I beg you, my dear. Perhaps we shall think of something.

Lopahin: What is there to think of?

Mme. Ranevskaya: Don't go, I beg you. With you here it's more cheerful anyway. Pause. I keep expecting something to happen, it's as though the house were go- ing to crash about our ears.

Gayev, in deep thought: Bank shot in the corner. . . . Three cushions in the side pocket. . . .

Mme. Ranevskaya: We have been great sinners . . .

Lopahin: What sins could you have committed?

Gayev, putting a candy in his mouth: They say I've eaten up my fortune in candy! Laughs.

Mme. Ranevskaya: O.h, my sins! I've squandered money away recklessly, like a lunatic, and I married a man who made nothing but debts. My husband drank himself to death on champagne, he was a terrifio drinker. And then, to my sorrow, I fell in love with another man, and I lived with him. And just then—that was my first punishment—a blow on the head: my little boy was drowned here in the river. And I went abroad, went away forever . . . never to come back, never to see this river again . . . I closed my eyes and ran, out of my mind. . . . But he followed me, pitiless, brutal. I bought a villa near Mentone, because he fell ill there; and for three years, day and night, I knew no peace, no rest. The sick man wore me out, he sucked my soul dry. Then last year, when the villa was sold to pay my debts, I went to Paris, and there he robbed me, abandoned me, took up with another woman, I tried to poison myself— it was stupid, so shameful—and then suddenly I felt drawn back to Russia, back to my own country, to my little girl. Wipes her tears away. Lord, Lord! Be merci- ful, forgive me my sins—don't punish me any more! Takes a telegram out of her pocket. This came today from Paris—he begs me to forgive him, implores me to go back . . . Tears up the telegram. Do I hear music? Listens.

Gayev: That's our famous Jewish band, you remem- ber? Four violins, a flute, and a double bass.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: Does it still exist? We ought to send for them some evening and have a party.

Lopahin, listens: I don't hear anything. Hums softly: "The Germans for a fee will Frenchify a Russian." Laughs. I saw a play at the theater yesterday—awfully funny.

M^. RANEVSKAYA: There was probably nothing funny about it. You shouldn't go to see plays, you should look at yourselves more often. How drab your lives are—how full of unnecessary talk.

Lopahin: That's true; come to think of it, we do live like fools. Pause. My pop was a peasant, an idiot; he understood nothing, never taught me anything, all he did was beat me when he was drunk, and always with a stick. Fundamentally, I'm just the same kind of block- head and idiot. I was never taught anything—I have a terrible handwriting, I write so that I feel ashamed be- fore people, like a pig.

M^. Ranevskaya: You should get married, my friend.

LopAHiN: Yes . . . that's true.

M^. Ranevskaya: To our Varya, she's a good girl.

Lop^^: Yes.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: She's a girl who comes of simple people, she works all day long; and above all, she loves you. Besides, you've liked her for a long time now.

Lop^mn: Well, I've nothing against it. She's a good girl. Pause.

Gayev: I've been offered a place in the bank—6,000 a year. Have you heard?

M^. Ranevskaya: You're not up to it. Stay where you are.

Fis enters, carrying an overcoat.

FIRS, to GAYEv: Please put this on, sir, it's damp.

GAYEV, putting it on: I'm fed up with you, brother.

Fms: Never mind. This morning you drove off with- out saying a word. Looks him over.

Mme. R^^VSKAYA: How you've aged, Firs.

Fms: I beg your pardon?

Lopahin: The lady says you've aged.

Fis: I've lived a long time; they were arranging my wedding and your papa wasn't born yet. Laughs. When freedom came I was already head footman. I wouldn't consent to be set free then; I stayed on with the master • . . Pause. I remember they were all very happy, but why they were happy, they didn't know themselves.

Lopaion: It was fine in the old days! At least there was flogging!

Fms, not hearing: Of course. The peasants kept to the masters, the masters kept to the peasants; but now they've all gone their own ways, and there's no making out anything.

Gayev: Be quiet, Firs. I must go to town tomorrow. They've promised to introduce me to a general who might let us have a loan.

Lopaion: Nothing will come of that. You won't even be able to pay the interest, you can be certain of that.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: He's raving, there isn't any gen- eral. Enter TnOFiMOV, Anya, and Varya.

Gayev: Here come our young people.

Anya: There's mamma, on the bench.

Mme. Ranevskaya, tenderly: Come here, come along, my darlings. Embraces Anya and Vahya. If you only knew how I love you both! Sit beside me—there, like that. All sit down.

Lopahin: Our perpetual student is always with the young ladies.

Trofimov: That's not any of your business.

Lopahin: He'll soon be fifty, and he's still a student!

Trofimov: Stop your silly jokes.

Lopahin: What are you so cross about, you queer bird?

Trofimov: Oh, leave me alone.

LoPAmN, laughs: Allow me to ask you, what do you think of me?

TnOFiMOV: What I think of you, Yermolay Alexeye- vich, is this: you are a rich man who will soon be a mil- lionaire. Well, just as a beast of prey, which devours everything that comes in its way, is necessary for the process of metabolism to go on, so you too are neces- sary. All laugh.

Varya: Better tell us something about the planets, Petya.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: No, let's go on with yesterday's conversation.

Trofimov: What was it about?

Gayev: About man's pride.

Trofimov: Yesterday we talked a long time, but we came to no conclusion. There is something mystical about man's pride in your sense of the word. Perhaps you're right, from your own point of view. But if you reason simply, without going into subtleties, then what call is there for pride? Is there any sense in it, if man is so poor a thing physiologically, and if, in the great majority of cases, he is coarse, stupid, and profoundly unhappy? We should stop admiring ourselves. We should work, and that's all.

Gayev: You die, anyway.

Trofimov: Who knows? And what does it mean— to die? Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and at his death only the five we know perish, while the other ninety-five remain alive.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: How clever you are, Petyal

LoPAHIN, ironically: Awfully clever!

Trofimov: Mankind goes forward, developing its powers. Everything that is now unattainable for it will one day come within man's reach and be clear to him; only we must work, helping with all our might those who seek the truth. Here among us in Russia only the very few work as yet. The great majority of the intel- ligentsia, as far as I can see, seek nothing, do nothing, are totally unfit for work of any kind. They call them- selves the intelligentsia, yet they are uncivil to their servants, treat the peasants like animals, are poor stu- dents, never read anything serious, do absolutely noth- ing at all, only talk about science, and have little appreci- ation of the arts. They are all solemn, have grim faces, they all philosophize and talk of weighty matters. And meanwhile the vast majority of us, ninety-nine out of a hundred, live like savages. At the least provocation—a punch in the jaw, and curses. They eat disgustingly, sleep in filth and stuffiness, bedbugs everywhere, stench and damp and moral slovenliness. And obviously, the only purpose of all our fine talk is to hoodwink ourselves and others. Show me where the public nurseries are that we've heard so much about, and the libraries. We read about them in novels, but in reality they don't exist, there is nothing but dirt, vulgarity, and Asiatic backwardness. I don't like very solemn faces, I'm afraid of them, I'm afraid of serious conversations. We'd do better to keep quiet for a while.

Lopahin: Do you know, I get up at five o'clock in the morning, and I work from morning till night; and I'm always handling money, my own and other people's, and I see what people around me are really like. You've only to start doing anything to see how few honest, de- cent people there are. Sometimes when I lie awake at night, I think: "Oh, Lord, thou hast given us immense forests, boundless fields, the widest horizons, and living in their midst, we ourselves ought really to be giants."

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: Now you want giants! They're only good in fairy tales; otherwise they're frightening.

Yprnonov crosses the stage at the rear, playing the guitar.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA, pensively: There goes Yeoihodov.

Anya, pensively: There goes Yepihodov.

Gayev: Ladies and gentlemen, the sun has set.

Trofimov: Yes.

Gayev, in a low voice, declaiming as it were: Oh, Nature, wondrous Nature, you shine with eternal radi- ance, beautiful and indifferent! You, whom we call our mother, unite within yourself life and death! You ani- mate and destroy!

Varya, pleadingly: Uncle dear!

Anya: Uncle, again!

Trofimov: You'd better bank the yellow ball in the side pocket.

GAYEV: I'm silent, I'm silent . . .

All sit plunged in thought. Stillness reigns. Only FiRS's muttering is audible. Suddenly a distant sound is heard, coming from the sky as it were, the sound of a snapping string, mournfully dying away.

Mme. Ranevskaya: What was that?

LoPAmN: I don't know. Somewhere far away, in the pits, a bucket's broken loose; but somewhere very far away.

Gayev: Or it might be some sort of bird, perhaps a heron.

Trofimov: Or an owl . . .

Mme. RANEVSKAYA, shudders: It's weird, somehow. Pause.

Frns: Before the calamity the same thing happened— the owl screeched, and the samovar hummed all the time.

GAYEV: Before what calamity?

Fms: Before the Freedom.[8] Pause.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: Come, my friends, let's be going. It's getting dark. To Anya. You have tears in your eyes. What is it, my little one? Embraces her.

Anya: I don't know, mamma; it's nothing.

Trofimov: Somebody's coming.

A TRAMP appears, tuearing a shabby white cap and an overcoat. He is slighthj drunk.

Tramp: Allow me to inquire, wiil this short-cut take me to the station?

Gayev: It will. Just follow that road.

Tramp: My heartfelt thanks. Coughing. The weather is glorious. Recites, "My brother, my suffering brother . . . Go do^ to the Volga! Whose groans . . . ?" To Varya. Mademoiselle, won't you spare 30 kopecks for a hungry Russian?

Varya, frightened, cries out.

LoPAHIN, angrilj: Even panhandling has its pro- prieties.

Mme. RANEvsKAYA, scared: Here, take this. Fumbles in her purse. I haven't any silver . . . never mind, here's a gold piece.

TRAMP: My heartfelt thanks. Exits. Laughter.

Varya, frightened: I'm leaving, I'm leaving . . . Oh, mamma dear, at home the servants have nothing to eat, and you gave him a gold piece!

Mme. RANEvsKAYA: What are you going to do me? I'm such a fool. When we get home, I'll give you everything I have. Yermolay Alexeyevich, you'll lend me some more . . .

Lopahin: Yes, ma'am.

Mme. Ranevskaya: Come, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to be going. Oh! Varya, we've settled all about your marriage. Congratulations!

Varya, through tears: Really, mamma, that's not a joking matter.

LoPAHIN: "Aurelia, get thee to a nunnery, go . • •"

Gayev: And do you know, my hands are trembling: I haven't played billiards in a long time.

LoPAJDN: "Aurelia, nymph, in your orisons, remem- ber me!"

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: Let's go, it's almost suppertime.

Varya: He frightened me! My heart's pounding.

LopAHIN: Let me remind you, ladies and gentlemen, on the 22nd of August the cherry orchard will be up for sale. Think about that! Think!

All except Trofimov and Anya go out.

Anya, laughs: I'm grateful to that tramp, he fright- ened Varya and so we're alone.

Trofimov: Varya's afraid we'll fall in love with each other all of a sudden. She hasn't left us alone for days. Her narrow mind can't grasp that we're above love. To avoid the petty and illusory, everything that prevents us from being free and happy—that is the goal and meaning of our life. Forward! Do not fall behind, friends!

Anya, strikes her hainds together: How well you speak! Pause. It's wonderful here today.

Trofimov: Yes, the weather's glorious.

Anya: What have you done to me, Petya? Why don't I love the cherry orchard as I used to? I loved it so tenderly. It seemed to me there was no spot on earth lovelier than our orchard.

TROFIMOV: All Russia is our orchard. Our land is vast and beautiful, there are many wonderful places in it. Pause. Think of it, Anya, your grandfather, your great- grandfather and all your ancestors were serf-owners, owners of living souls, and aren't human beings looking at you from every tree in the orchard, from every leaf, from every trunk? Don't you hear voices? Oh, it's terrify- ing! Your orchard is a fearful place, and when you pass through it in the evening or at night, the old bark on the trees gleams faintly, and the cherry trees seem to be dreaming of things that happened a hundred, two hun- dred years ago and to be tormented by painful visions. What is there to say? We're at least two hundred years behind, we've really achieved nothing yet, we have no definite attitude to the past, we only philosophize, com- plain of the blues, or drink vodka. It's all so clear: in order to live in the present, we should first redeem our past, finish with it, and we can expiate it only by suffer- ing, only by extraordinary, unceasing labor. Realize that, Anya.

Anya: The house in which we live has long ceased to be our own, and I will leave it, I give you my word.

TROFIMOV: If you have the keys, fling them into the well and go away. Be free as the wind.

ANYA, in ecrtasy: How well you put that!

Trofimov: Believe me, Anya, believe mel I'm not yet thirty, I'm young, I'm still a student—but I've already suffered so much. In winter I'm hungry, sick, harassed, poor as a beggar, and where hasn't Fate driven me? Where haven't I been? And yet always, every moment of the day and night, my soul is filled with inexplicable premonitions. ... I have a premonition of happiness, Anya. • . . I see it already!

ANYA, pensively: The moon is rising.

Yepihotov is heard playing the same mournful tune on the guitar. The moon rises. Somewhere near the pop- lars Varya is looking for Anya and calling "Anya, where are you?"

TROFIMOV: Yes, the moon is rising. Pause. There it is, happiness, it's approaching, it's coming nearer and nearer, I can already hear its footsteps. And if we don't see it, if we don't know it, what does it matter? Others wiU!

Varya's voice: "Anyal Where are you?'

TROFIMOV: That Varya again! Angrily. It's revolting!

Anya: Never mind, let's go down to the river. It's lovely there.

Trofimov: Come on. They go. Varya's voice: "Anyal Anya!"

Act III

DRAWING-ROOM separated by an arch from

a ballroom. Evening. Chandelier burning. The Jewish band is heard playing in the anteroom. In the ballroom they are dancing the Grand Rand. PiSHCHIK is heard calling, "Promenade a une paire." Pishchik and CHARLOTI'A, TaOFIMOv and MmE. RANEvSKAYA, ANYA and the PosT Office Clerk, Varya and the STATION- MASTER, and others, enter the drawing-room in couples. Dunyasha is in the last couple. Varya weeps quietly, wiping her tears as she dances. All parade through draw- ing-room. Pishchik calling "Grand rond, balancez!" and "Les cavaliers a genoux et remerciez vos dames!" Fms wearing a dress-coat, brings in soda-water on a tray. Pish^hk and Trofimov enter the drawing-room.

PlSHCHiK: I'm a full-blooded man; I've already had two strokes. Dancing's hard work for me; but as they say, "If you run with the pack, you can bark or not, but at least wag your tail." Still, I'm as strong as a horse. My late lamented father, who would have his joke, God rest his soul, used to say, talking about our origin, that the ancient line of the Simeonov-Pishchiks was de- scended from the very horse that Caligula had made a senator. Sits down. But the trouble is, I have no money. A hungry dog believes in nothing but meat. Snores and wakes up at once. It's the same with me—I can think of nothing but money.

Trofimov: You know, there is something equine about your figure.

PiSHCIDK: Well, a horse is a fine animal—one can sell a horse.

Sound of billiards being played in an adjoining room. VARYA appears in the archway.

Trofimov, teasing her: Madam Lopahina! Madam Lopahina!

Varya, angrily: Mangy master!

Trofimov: Yes, I am a mangy master and I'm proud of it.

Varya, reflecting bitterly: Here we've hired musi- cians, and what shall we pay them with? Exits.

Trofimov, to Pishchik: If the energy you have spent during your lifetime looking for money to pay interest had gone into something else, in the end you could have turned the world upside down.

PISHCIDK: Nietzsche, the philosopher, the greatest, most famous of men, that colossal intellect, says in his works, that it is permissible to forge banknotes.

Trofimov: Have you read Nietzsche?

PISHCHIK: Well . . . Dashenka told me . . . And now I've got to the point where forging banknotes is about the only way out for me. . . . The day after to- morrow I have to pay 310 rubles—I already have 130 . . . Feels in his pockets. In alarm. The money's gone! I've lost my money! Through tears. Where's my money? Joyfully. Here it is! Inside the lining . . . I'm all in a sweat . . .

Enter Mme. and Charl^tca.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA, hums the "Lezginka": Why isn't Leonid back yet? What is he doing in town? To DuN- YASHA. Dunyasha, offer the musicians tea.

Trofimov : The auction hasn't taken place, most likely.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: It's the wrong time to have the band, and the wrong time to give a dance. Well, never mind. Sits down and hums softly.

Charlotta, hands Pisiiciiik a pack of cards: Here is a pack of cards. Think of any card you like.

Pishchik: I've thought of one.

CHAHLO'ITA: ShufUe the pack now. That's right. Give it here, my dear Mr. Pishchik. Ein, zwei, drei! Now look for it—it's in your side pocket.

Pishchik, taking the card out of his pocket: The eight of spades! Perfectly right! Just imagine!

CHARLOTTA, holding pack of cards in her hands. To Trofimov: Quickly, name the top card.

TnoFiMOv: Well, let's see—the queen of spades.

Charlotta: Right! To Pishchik. Now name the top card.

Pishchik: The ace of hearts.

Charlotta: Right! Claps her hands and the pack of cards disappears. Ah, what lovely weather it is today! A mysterious feminine voice which seems to come from under the floor, answers her: "Oh, yes, it's magnificent weather, madam."

Charlotta: You are my best ideal.

VmcE: "And I find you pleasing too, madam."

STATIO^MASTER, applauding: The lady ventriloquist, bravo!

Pishchik, amazed: Just imagine! Enchanting Char- lotta Ivanovna, I'm simply in love with you.

CHARLOTTA: In love? Shrugs her shoulders. Are you capable of love? Cuter Mensch, aber schlechter Musi- kant!

Trofimov, claps Pishchik on the shoulder: You old horse, you!

Charlotta: Attention please! One more trick! Takes a plaid from a chair. Here is a very good plaid; I want to sell it. Shaking it out. Does anyone want to buy it?

Pishc^k, in amazement: Just imagine!

C^RLO'ITA: Ein, zwei, dreil Raises the plaid quick- ly, behind it stands .ANYA. She curtsies, runs to her mother, embraces her, and runs back into the ballroom, amidst general enthusi^m.

Mme. R^^vsKAYA, applauds: Bravo! Bravo!

Charlotta: Now again! Ein, zwei, drei! Lifts the plaid; behind it stands Varya bowing.

Pishc^k, running after her: The rascall What a woman, what a woman! Exits.

Mme. R^^vsKAYA: And Leonid still isn't here. What is he doing in town so long? I don't understand. It must be all over by now. Either the estate has been sold, or the auction hasn't taken place. Why keep us in suspense so long?

V^rya, trying to consonsole her: Uncle's bought it, I feel sure of that.

Trofimov, mockingly: Oh, yes!

Varya: Great-aunt sent him an authorization to buy it in her name, and to transfer the debt. She's doing it for Anya's sake. And I'm sure that God will help us, and uncle will buy it.

Mme. Ranevskaya: Great-aunt sent fifteen thousand to buy the estate in her name, she doesn't trust us, but that's not even enough to pay the interest. Covers her face with her hands. Today my fate will be decided, my fate—

Trofimov, teasing Varya: Madam Lopahinal

Varya, angrily: Perpetual student! Twice already you've been expelled from the university.

Mme. Ranevskaya: Why are you so cross, Varya? He's teasing you about Lopahin. Well, what of it? If you want to marry Lopahin, go ahead. He's a good man, and interesting; if you don't want to, don't. No. body's compelling you, my pet!

Varya: Frankly, mamma dear, I take this thing seri- ously; he's a good man and I like him.

Mme. RANEVSKAYA: All right then, marry him. I don't know what you're waiting for.

Varya: But, mamma, I can't propose to him myseH. For the last two years everyone's been talking to me about him—talking. But he either keeps silent, or else cracks jokes. I understand; he's growing rich, he's ab- sorbed in business—he has no time for me. If I had money, even a little, say, 100 rubles, I'd throw every- thing up and go far away—I'd go into a nunnery.