ACT ONE
The Prozorovs’ house. A drawing-room with columns, beyond which a large ballroom is visible. Midday; it is sunny and cheerful outside. In the ballroom, a table is being set for lunch.
Olga, wearing the dark blue uniform dress of a high-school teacher, is correcting exercise books, standing and walking about; Masha, in a black dress, sits with a hat on her lap, reading a book; Irina, in a white dress, stands lost in thought.
OLGA: Father died exactly a year ago, on this very day, the fifth of May, your name-day, Irina. It was very cold then, it was snowing. I thought I wouldn’t survive, you were lying in a faint, like a dead person. But a year has passed, and we remember it easily; you are in a white dress now, your face is radiant. (The clock strikes twelve.) The clock struck just the same way then.
(Pause.)
I remember, when they carried Father out, the band was playing, and they fired shots at the cemetery. He was a general, commanded a brigade, yet there were few people following. But then, it was raining. A heavy rain and snow.
IRINA: Why remember!
(Beyond the columns, in the ballroom near the table, Baron Tuzenbach, Chebutykin, and Solyony appear.)
OLGA: It’s warm today, we can have the windows wide open, and the birches are still not out. Father received his brigade and left Moscow with us eleven years ago, and I remember distinctly, in early May, at this very time, everything in Moscow was already in bloom, warm, bathed in sunlight. Eleven years have passed, and I remember everything there as if we left yesterday. My God! This morning I woke up, saw so much light, saw the spring, and a wave of joy rose in my soul, and I yearned passionately for my homeland.
CHEBUTYKIN: The deuce it is!
TUZENBACH: Nonsense, of course.
(Masha, lost in her book, quietly whistles a tune.)
OLGA: Don’t whistle, Masha. How can you!
(Pause.)
Because I’m at the high school every day and then tutoring until evening, I constantly have a headache, and I have thoughts as if I’ve already grown old. And truly, in these four years since I started working at the high school, I feel my strength and my youth draining away from me, drop by drop, every day. And only one dream grows and strengthens…
IRINA: To go to Moscow. Sell the house, finish everything here, and—to Moscow…
OLGA: Yes! To Moscow, quickly.
(Chebutykin and Tuzenbach laugh.)
IRINA: Brother will probably be a professor, he certainly won’t stay living here. The only obstacle is poor Masha.
OLGA: Masha will come to Moscow every summer, every year.
(Masha quietly whistles a tune.)
IRINA: God grant that everything will work out. (Looking out the window.) Lovely weather today. I don’t know why my heart feels so light! This morning I remembered it was my name-day, and suddenly I felt joy, and I remembered childhood, when Mother was still alive. And what wonderful thoughts stirred in me, what thoughts!
OLGA: You are radiant today, you look unusually beautiful. And Masha is beautiful too. Andrey would be handsome, but he has grown too fat; it doesn’t suit him. And I have aged, I’ve lost a lot of weight, probably because I get annoyed with the girls at the high school. Today I’m free, I’m home, and my head doesn’t ache, I feel younger than yesterday. I’m only twenty-eight… Everything is fine, everything is from God, but it seems to me that if I were married and could stay home all day, that would be better somehow.
(Pause.)
I would love my husband.
TUZENBACH (to Solyony): Such nonsense you talk, I’m tired of listening to you. (Entering the drawing-room.) I forgot to mention. Our new battery commander, Vershinin, is coming to visit today. (Sits at the piano.)
OLGA: Well, good! We’ll be very glad.
IRINA: Is he old?
TUZENBACH: No, not at all. Forty, forty-five at the most. (Plays a quiet tune.) A nice fellow, apparently. Not stupid, that’s certain. But he talks a lot.
IRINA: Is he interesting?
TUZENBACH: Yes, not bad, only he has a wife, a mother-in-law, and two little girls. Moreover, he is married for the second time. He pays visits and everywhere says that he has a wife and two little girls. And he’ll say it here too. His wife is some sort of half-wit, with a long girl’s braid, who speaks only high-flown phrases, philosophizes, and often attempts suicide, obviously to annoy her husband. I would have left a woman like that long ago, but he endures it and only complains.
SOLYONY (entering the drawing-room from the ballroom with Chebutykin): With one hand I can only lift thirty pounds, but with two I can lift one hundred, even one hundred and twenty. From this I conclude that two men are stronger than one not by two times, but by three times, or even more…
CHEBUTYKIN (reading a newspaper as he walks): In case of hair loss… two zolotniks of naphthalene to half a bottle of spirit… dissolve and apply daily… (He writes in a notebook.) We’ll make a note of it! (To Solyony.) So, as I was telling you, the little stopper is put into the bottle, and a glass tube passes through it… Then you take a pinch of the very simplest, most ordinary alum…
IRINA: Ivan Romanych, dear Ivan Romanych!
CHEBUTYKIN: What is it, my little girl, my joy?
IRINA: Tell me, why am I so happy today? It’s as if I were on sails, with a wide blue sky above me and large white birds flying. Why is this? Why?
CHEBUTYKIN (kissing both her hands, tenderly): My white bird…
IRINA: When I woke up today, got up and washed, it suddenly seemed to me that everything in this world was clear to me, and I knew how to live. Dear Ivan Romanych, I know everything. A person must work, toil in the sweat of their brow, whoever they may be, and in this alone lies the meaning and purpose of their life, their happiness, their ecstasies. How wonderful it is to be a worker who gets up at dawn and breaks stones in the street, or a shepherd, or a schoolteacher who teaches children, or an engine driver on the railway… My God, not just a person, it’s better to be an ox, better to be a simple horse, as long as it can work, than a young woman who wakes up at twelve o’clock in the afternoon, then drinks coffee in bed, and then spends two hours getting dressed… oh, how awful that is! In hot weather, one sometimes longs to drink, just as I have longed to work. And if I don’t get up early in the future and work, refuse me your friendship, Ivan Romanych.
CHEBUTYKIN (tenderly): I will refuse, I will refuse…
OLGA: Father accustomed us to getting up at seven o’clock. Now Irina wakes up at seven and lies there thinking about something until at least nine. And her face is serious! (She laughs.)
IRINA: You’re used to seeing me as a little girl, and it’s strange to you when my face is serious. I am twenty years old!
TUZENBACH: This longing for work, oh my God, how well I understand it! I have never worked once in my life. I was born in Petersburg, cold and idle, into a family that never knew labor or any worries. I remember, when I came home from the cadet school, a lackey would pull off my boots; I would be capricious at the time, and my mother would look at me with reverence and was surprised when others looked at me differently. I was protected from work. But whether they succeeded in protecting me—hardly! The time has come, a colossal change is advancing upon us all, a healthy, strong storm is brewing, it is coming, it is close, and it will soon sweep away from our society its laziness, its indifference, its prejudice against work, and its rotten boredom. I will work, and in another twenty-five or thirty years, every person will work. Every person!
CHEBUTYKIN: I shall not work.
TUZENBACH: You don’t count.
SOLYONY: In twenty-five years you’ll no longer be on this earth, thank God. In two or three years you’ll die of a stroke, or I shall lose my temper and put a bullet in your forehead, my angel. (Takes a bottle of perfume from his pocket and sprinkles his chest and hands.)
CHEBUTYKIN (laughs): And I really never did anything. Since I left university, I haven’t lifted a finger, haven’t even read a single book, only read newspapers… (Takes another newspaper from his pocket.) Here… I know from the papers that there was, say, Dobrolyubov, but what he wrote—I don’t know… God knows…
(A tapping sound is heard from the floor below.)
There… They’re calling me downstairs, someone has come to see me. I’ll come right away… wait… (Hurries out, combing his beard.)
IRINA: He’s up to something.
TUZENBACH: Yes. He went out with a solemn face, obviously he’s bringing you a present now.
IRINA: How unpleasant!
OLGA: Yes, it’s awful. He always does something foolish.
MASHA: The green oak by the curving shore, a golden chain is on that oak… A golden chain is on that oak… (She gets up and sings softly.)
OLGA: You’re not cheerful today, Masha.
(Masha, singing, puts on her hat.)
Where are you going?
MASHA: Home.
IRINA: How strange…
TUZENBACH: Leaving a name-day party!
MASHA: It doesn’t matter… I’ll come back in the evening. Goodbye, my dear… (Kisses Irina.) I wish you well once again, be healthy, be happy. In the old days, when Father was alive, thirty or forty officers would come to our name-days every time, it was noisy, but today there’s only one and a half people and it’s quiet as a desert… I’m going… Today I’m in a merlehlyundiya, I’m not cheerful, so don’t listen to me. (Laughing through her tears.) We’ll talk later, but for now, goodbye, my dear, I’ll go somewhere.
IRINA (displeased): Really, Masha…
OLGA (with tears): I understand you, Masha.
SOLYONY: If a man philosophizes, it’s either philosophistics or sophistry; but if a woman or two women philosophize, then that’s—pull my finger.
MASHA: What do you mean by that, you terribly frightening man?
SOLYONY: Nothing. He couldn’t even sigh before a bear sat on him.
(Pause.)
MASHA (to Olga, angrily): Don’t cry!
(Anfisa and Ferapont enter with a cake.)
ANFISA: This way, my dear soul. Come in, your boots are clean. (To Irina.) From the District Council, from Protopopov, Mikhail Ivanych… A pie.
IRINA: Thank you. Please thank him. (Accepts the cake.)
FERAPONT: What?
IRINA (louder): Please thank him!
OLGA: Nanny, give him some pie. Ferapont, go, they’ll give you some pie over there.
FERAPONT: What?
ANFISA: Let’s go, my dear Ferapont Spiridonovich. Let’s go… (Leaves with Ferapont.)
MASHA: I don’t like Protopopov, that Mikhail Potapych, or Ivanych. He shouldn’t be invited.
IRINA: I didn’t invite him.
MASHA: Excellent.
(Chebutykin enters, followed by a soldier with a silver samovar; a murmur of astonishment and dissatisfaction.)
OLGA (covering her face with her hands): A samovar! This is awful! (Goes into the ballroom towards the table.)
IRINA, TUZENBACH, and MASHA together:
IRINA: Dearest Ivan Romanych, what are you doing!
TUZENBACH (laughs): I told you so.
MASHA: Ivan Romanych, you simply have no shame!
CHEBUTYKIN: My darlings, my dear ones, you are the only ones for me, you are the dearest thing I have in the world. I’ll soon be sixty, I’m an old man, a lonely, insignificant old man… There is nothing good in me, except this love for you, and if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have lived on this earth for a long time… (To Irina.) My dear, my little girl, I’ve known you since the day you were born… carried you in my arms… I loved your late mother…
IRINA: But why such expensive gifts!
CHEBUTYKIN (through tears, angrily): Expensive gifts… Oh, to the deuce with you! (To the orderly.) Carry the samovar in there… (Mimics.) Expensive gifts…
(The orderly carries the samovar into the ballroom.)
ANFISA (crossing the drawing-room): My dears, a strange colonel! He’s already taken off his coat, my little ones, he’s coming this way. Arinushka, be affectionate and polite… (Leaving.) And it’s high time to have lunch… Lord…
TUZENBACH: Vershinin, I suppose.
(Vershinin enters.)
Lieutenant Colonel Vershinin!
VERSHININ (to Masha and Irina): Allow me to introduce myself: Vershinin. I’m very, very glad to be here at last. How you’ve grown! Oh! Oh!
IRINA: Please sit down. We are very pleased.
VERSHININ (cheerfully): How glad I am, how glad I am! But there are three of you sisters. I remember—three little girls. I don’t remember the faces anymore, but I remember perfectly and saw with my own eyes that your father, Colonel Prozorov, had three little girls. How time flies! Oh, oh, how time flies!
TUZENBACH: Alexander Ignatyevich is from Moscow.
IRINA: From Moscow? You are from Moscow?
VERSHININ: Yes, from there. Your late father was a battery commander there, and I was an officer in the same brigade. (To Masha.) I seem to remember your face a little.
MASHA: And I don’t remember you!
IRINA: Olga! Olga! (Calling into the ballroom.) Olga, come here!
(Olga enters from the ballroom into the drawing-room.)
Lieutenant Colonel Vershinin, it turns out, is from Moscow.
VERSHININ: You must be Olga Sergeyevna, the eldest… And you are Maria… And you are Irina—the youngest…
OLGA: You are from Moscow?
VERSHININ: Yes. I studied in Moscow and began my service in Moscow, served there for a long time, and finally received a battery here—transferred here, as you see. I don’t actually remember you, I only remember that there were three sisters. Your father is preserved in my memory; I close my eyes and see him as if he were alive. I used to visit your house in Moscow…
OLGA: It seemed to me I remembered everyone, and suddenly…
VERSHININ: My name is Alexander Ignatyevich…
IRINA: Alexander Ignatyevich, you are from Moscow… What an unexpected surprise!
OLGA: We are moving there, you know.
IRINA: We think we’ll be there by autumn. It’s our native city, we were born there… On Staraya Basmannaya Street…
(Both laugh with joy.)
MASHA: An unexpected encounter with a fellow countryman. (Vivaciously.) Now I remember! Do you remember, Olga, they used to say: “the major in love.” You were a lieutenant then and were in love with someone, and everyone for some reason teased you as the Major…
VERSHININ (laughs): That’s right, that’s right… The major in love, that’s true…
MASHA: You only had a mustache then… Oh, how you’ve aged! (Through tears.) How you’ve aged!
VERSHININ: Yes, when they called me the major in love, I was still young, I was in love. Now it’s different.
OLGA: But you don’t have a single gray hair yet. You’ve aged, but you’re not old yet.
VERSHININ: Nevertheless, I’m already forty-three. How long ago did you leave Moscow?
IRINA: Eleven years. Well, Masha, why are you crying, you strange girl… (Through tears.) I’ll cry too…
MASHA: I’m fine. And what street did you live on?
VERSHININ: On Staraya Basmannaya.
OLGA: We were there too…
VERSHININ: For a time I lived on Nemetskaya Street. From Nemetskaya Street I used to walk to the Red Barracks. There’s a gloomy bridge on the way, the water rushes under the bridge. A lonely person feels sad there.
(Pause.)
But what a wide, rich river you have here! A marvelous river!
OLGA: Yes, but it’s cold. It’s cold here and there are mosquitoes…
VERSHININ: What are you saying! You have such a healthy, good, Slavic climate here. Forest, river… and birches here too. Sweet, modest birches, I love them more than all other trees. It’s good to live here. Only it’s strange, the railway station is twenty versts away… And nobody knows why that is.
SOLYONY: And I know why that is.
(Everyone looks at him.)
Because if the station were close, it wouldn’t be far away, and if it’s far away, then it’s not close.
(Awkward silence.)
TUZENBACH: A joker, Vasily Vasilyich.
OLGA: Now I remember you too. I remember.
VERSHININ: I knew your mother.
CHEBUTYKIN: She was a good woman, God rest her soul.
IRINA: Mama is buried in Moscow.
OLGA: In Novodevichy…
MASHA: Imagine, I’m already starting to forget her face. Just like that, they won’t remember us either. They’ll forget.
VERSHININ: Yes. They’ll forget. That’s our fate, there’s nothing to be done. What seems serious, significant, very important to us—the time will come—will be forgotten or will seem unimportant.
(Pause.)
And it’s interesting, we cannot know at all now what, exactly, will be considered high, important, and what will be miserable and ridiculous. Did not the discovery of Copernicus or, say, Columbus seem useless and ridiculous at first, and some empty nonsense written by an oddball seem to be the truth? And it may happen that our present life, with which we are so reconciled, will in time seem strange, inconvenient, unwise, insufficiently pure, perhaps even sinful…
TUZENBACH: Who knows? And perhaps our life will be called lofty, and they will remember it with respect. There is no torture now, no executions, no invasions, but at the same time, how much suffering there is!
SOLYONY (in a thin voice): Tsypp, tsypp, tsypp… Don’t feed the Baron porridge, just let him philosophize.
TUZENBACH: Vasily Vasilyich, I beg you to leave me alone… (Sits down in another spot.) It’s boring, finally.
SOLYONY (in a thin voice): Tsypp, tsypp, tsypp…
TUZENBACH (to Vershinin): The sufferings that are observed now—there are so many of them!—still speak of a certain moral upswing that society has already reached…
VERSHININ: Yes, yes, of course.
CHEBUTYKIN: You just said, Baron, that our life will be called lofty; but people are still so petty… (Gets up.) Look how petty I am. I have to say that my life is lofty, an understandable thing, for my own consolation.
(Violin playing is heard offstage.)
MASHA: That’s Andrey playing, our brother.
IRINA: He is a scholar. He will probably be a professor. Father was a military man, and his son chose a scholarly career.
MASHA: At Father’s wish.
OLGA: We teased him today. He seems to be a little in love.
IRINA: With a young lady here in town. She’ll be here today, most likely.
MASHA: Oh, the way she dresses! Not that it’s ugly or unfashionable, but simply pitiful. Some strange, brightly colored, yellowish skirt with such a vulgar fringe and a red blouse. And her cheeks are so scrubbed, so scrubbed! Andrey is not in love—I don’t allow it, he still has some taste—he’s just teasing us, fooling around. I heard yesterday that she’s marrying Protopopov, the chairman of the local Council. And that’s wonderful… (To the side door.) Andrey, come here! Darling, for a minute!
(Andrey enters.)
OLGA: This is my brother, Andrey Sergeyich.
VERSHININ: Vershinin.
ANDREY: Prozorov. (Wipes his sweaty face.) You’re our new battery commander?
OLGA: Can you imagine, Alexander Ignatyevich is from Moscow.
ANDREY: Really? Well, congratulations, now my sisters won’t give you a moment’s peace.
VERSHININ: I’ve already managed to bore your sisters.
IRINA: Look at the frame Andrey gave me for a portrait today! (Shows the frame.) He made it himself.
VERSHININ (looking at the frame, not knowing what to say): Yes… a thing…
IRINA: And that frame above the piano, he made that too.
(Andrey waves his hand and moves away.)
OLGA: He’s a scholar, plays the violin, and carves different little things—in a word, a jack-of-all-trades. Andrey, don’t leave! It’s his habit—always to leave. Come here!
(Masha and Irina take him by the arms and lead him back, laughing.)
MASHA: Come, come!
ANDREY: Please let go.
MASHA: How ridiculous! Alexander Ignatyevich was once called the major in love, and he didn’t mind at all.
VERSHININ: Not at all!
MASHA: And I want to call you: the violinist in love!
IRINA: Or the professor in love!…
OLGA: He’s in love! Andryusha is in love!
IRINA (applauding): Bravo, bravo! Encore! Andryushka is in love!
CHEBUTYKIN (comes up behind Andrey and takes him around the waist with both arms): For love alone nature produced us in the world! (Laughs; he is holding the newspaper all the time.)
ANDREY: Well, that’s enough, enough… (Wipes his face.) I didn’t sleep all night, and I’m a little beside myself, as they say. I was reading until four o’clock, then went to bed, but it didn’t work out. I kept thinking about this and that, and then the early dawn, the sun just flooding the bedroom. I want to translate a book from English over the summer, while I’m here.
VERSHININ: And you read English?
ANDREY: Yes. Father, God rest his soul, burdened us with education. It’s funny and silly, but I have to confess, after his death I started to gain weight, and I’ve put on weight in a year, as if my body were freed from a burden. Thanks to Father, my sisters and I know French, German, and English, and Irina also knows Italian. But what a cost it was!
MASHA: In this town, knowing three languages is a useless luxury. Not even a luxury, but some sort of unnecessary appendage, like a sixth finger. We know too much that’s superfluous.
VERSHININ: Well, I never! (Laughs.) You know too much that’s superfluous! It seems to me that there is not and cannot be such a boring and cheerless town where a clever, educated person would be unnecessary. Let us assume that among the hundred thousand inhabitants of this town, which is, of course, backward and crude, there are only three people like you. It goes without saying that you cannot defeat the dark mass surrounding you; in the course of your life you will gradually have to yield and get lost in the crowd of a hundred thousand, life will stifle you, but still, you will not disappear, you will not remain without influence; there will be, perhaps, six people like you after you, then twelve, and so on, until finally people like you become the majority. In two or three hundred years, life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful, astonishing. Humanity needs such a life, and if it doesn’t exist yet, people must anticipate it, wait for it, dream of it, prepare for it; to do this, they must see and know more than their grandfather and father saw and knew. (Laughs.) And you complain that you know too much that is superfluous.
MASHA (takes off her hat): I’m staying for lunch.
IRINA (with a sigh): Truly, all that ought to be written down…
(Andrey is gone, he has quietly slipped away.)
TUZENBACH: In many years, you say, life on earth will be beautiful, astonishing. That is true. But in order to participate in it now, even from afar, one must prepare for it, one must work…
VERSHININ (gets up): Yes. How many flowers you have, though! (Looking around.) And the apartment is marvelous. I envy you! And I’ve spent my whole life wandering in little apartments with two chairs, one sofa, and stoves that always smoke. What my life has lacked is precisely such flowers as these… (Rubs his hands.) Oh well! But what’s the use!
TUZENBACH: Yes, one must work. You probably think: the German is being sentimental. But I, honestly, I am Russian and don’t even speak German. My father was Orthodox…
(Pause.)
VERSHININ (walking about the stage): I often think: what if one were to begin life anew, and consciously at that? If the life that has already been lived was, so to speak, the rough draft, and the second—the clean copy! Then each of us, I think, would try first and foremost not to repeat himself, at least he would create a different setting for his life, would arrange an apartment like this, with flowers, with plenty of light… I have a wife, two little girls, and my wife is an unhealthy lady, and so on and so forth, well, if I were to begin life anew, I would not marry… No, no!
(Kulygin enters in his uniform frock coat.)
KULYGIN (going up to Irina): Dear sister, allow me to congratulate you on your name-day and wish you sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, health and everything that one can wish a girl your age. And permit me to present you with this book as a gift. (Hands her a book.) The history of our high school for fifty years, written by me. A trivial book, written for want of anything better to do, but please read it anyway. Good day, gentlemen! (To Vershinin.) Kulygin, teacher at the local high school. Court Councillor. (To Irina.) In this book you will find a list of all those who have graduated from your high school in these fifty years. Feci quod potui, faciant meliora potentes (I have done what I could; let those who can do better.) (Kisses Masha.)
IRINA: But you already gave me such a book at Easter.
KULYGIN (laughs): Impossible! In that case, give it back, or better yet, give it to the Colonel. Take it, Colonel. You might read it sometime out of boredom.
VERSHININ: Thank you. (He is about to leave.) I am extremely glad to have made your acquaintance…
OLGA: You’re leaving? No, no!
IRINA: You must stay for lunch. Please.
OLGA: I beg you!
VERSHININ (bows): I seem to have stumbled upon a name-day. Forgive me, I didn’t know, I haven’t congratulated you… (Leaves with Olga into the ballroom.)
KULYGIN: Today, gentlemen, is Sunday, a day of rest, so let us rest, let us enjoy ourselves, each according to his age and position. We must take up the carpets for the summer and put them away until winter… With Persian powder or naphthalene… The Romans were healthy because they knew how to work, and they knew how to rest; they had mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body). Their life flowed according to fixed forms. Our headmaster says: the main thing in any life is its form… That which loses its form comes to an end—and the same is true in our daily lives. (Takes Masha by the waist, laughing.) Masha loves me. My wife loves me. And the window curtains will also go with the carpets… Today I am cheerful, in an excellent frame of mind. Masha, we are going to the Headmaster’s at four o’clock today. A walk is being arranged for the teachers and their families.
MASHA: I won’t go.
KULYGIN (upset): Dear Masha, why not?
MASHA: I’ll tell you later… (Angrily.) All right, I’ll go, just please leave me alone… (Moves away.)
KULYGIN: And then we’ll spend the evening at the Headmaster’s. Despite his ill health, this man strives above all to be sociable. A superb, brilliant personality. A magnificent man. Yesterday after the council meeting he said to me: “I’m tired, Fyodor Ilyich! I’m tired!” (Looks at the wall clock, then at his own.) Your clock is seven minutes fast. Yes, he says, I’m tired!
(Violin playing is heard offstage.)
OLGA: Gentlemen, you are most welcome, please come to lunch! Pie!
KULYGIN: Ah, my dear Olga, my darling! I worked yesterday from morning until eleven o’clock at night, I’m tired, and today I feel happy. (Goes into the ballroom toward the table.) My darling…
CHEBUTYKIN (puts the newspaper in his pocket, combs his beard): Pie? Excellent!
MASHA (to Chebutykin, sternly): Just mind you don’t drink anything today. Do you hear? Drinking is bad for you.
CHEBUTYKIN: Oh, come on! I’ve stopped already. Haven’t been on a binge for two years. (Impatiently.) Ah, my little mother, does it really matter!
MASHA: Still, don’t you dare drink. Don’t you dare. (Angrily, but so her husband cannot hear.) To hell with it, another whole evening of boredom at the Headmaster’s!
TUZENBACH: I wouldn’t go if I were you… It’s very simple.
CHEBUTYKIN: Don’t go, my dear girl.
MASHA: Yes, don’t go… This damned, unbearable life… (Goes into the ballroom.)
CHEBUTYKIN (follows her): Come on now!
SOLYONY (passing into the ballroom): Tsypp, tsypp, tsypp…
TUZENBACH: That’s enough, Vasily Vasilyich. Stop it!
SOLYONY: Tsypp, tsypp, tsypp…
KULYGIN (cheerfully): Your health, Colonel! I am a teacher, and I’m family here, Masha’s husband… She is kind, very kind…
VERSHININ: I’ll drink some of this dark vodka… (Drinks.) Your health! (To Olga.) I feel so good at your house!..
(Only Irina and Tuzenbach remain in the drawing-room.)
IRINA: Masha is in a bad mood today. She married when she was eighteen, when he seemed to her the cleverest man in the world. Now it’s different. He is the kindest, but not the cleverest.
OLGA (impatiently): Andrey, come on finally!
ANDREY (offstage): Just a moment. (Enters and goes to the table.)
TUZENBACH: What are you thinking about?
IRINA: Nothing much. I don’t like and I am afraid of that Solyony. He only talks nonsense…
TUZENBACH: He is a strange man. I feel sorry for him and annoyed with him, but more sorry. I think he is shy… When we are alone, he is very clever and gentle, but in company he is a boor, a bully. Don’t go, let them sit down at the table for now. Let me stay near you. What are you thinking about?
(Pause.)
You are twenty years old, and I am not yet thirty. How many years we have left ahead of us, a long, long series of days, full of my love for you…
IRINA: Nikolay Lvovich, don’t talk to me about love.
TUZENBACH (not listening): I have a passionate thirst for life, for struggle, for work, and this thirst in my soul has merged with my love for you, Irina, and, as if by design, you are beautiful, and life seems so beautiful to me! What are you thinking about?
IRINA: You say: life is beautiful. Yes, but only if it just seems that way! For us three sisters, life has not been beautiful yet; it has choked us, like weeds… Tears are running down my face. This is unnecessary… (Quickly wipes her face, smiles.) We must work, work. That is why we are cheerless and look so gloomily at life, because we don’t know work. We were born of people who despised work…
(Natalya Ivanovna enters; she is wearing a pink dress with a green belt.)
NATASHA: They are already sitting down to lunch… I’m late… (Glances briefly in the mirror, adjusts herself.) I think my hair is alright… (Seeing Irina.) Dear Irina Sergeyevna, congratulations! (Kisses her hard and long.) You have so many guests, I truly feel ashamed… Hello, Baron!
OLGA (entering the drawing-room): Well, here is Natalya Ivanovna. Hello, my dear!
(They kiss.)
NATASHA: Happy name-day. You have such a large company, I am terribly confused…
OLGA: Nonsense, they are all family. (Whispering, frightened.) You have a green belt on! My dear, that’s not good!
NATASHA: Is there a superstition?
OLGA: No, it just doesn’t suit you… and it’s somehow strange…
NATASHA (in a tearful voice): Really? But it’s not green, it’s more like a dull shade. (Follows Olga into the ballroom.)
(They sit down to lunch in the ballroom; the drawing-room is empty.)
KULYGIN: I wish you, Irina, a good fiancé. It’s time for you to get married.
CHEBUTYKIN: Natalya Ivanovna, I wish you a fiancé too.
KULYGIN: Natalya Ivanovna already has a fiancé.
MASHA (tapping a fork on a plate): I’ll drink a glass of wine! Oh well, what a life, here’s to us!
KULYGIN: You are behaving like a three-minus student.
VERSHININ: The liqueur is tasty. What is it infused with?
SOLYONY: Cockroaches.
IRINA (in a tearful voice): Ugh! Ugh! How disgusting!…
OLGA: For supper there will be roasted turkey and sweet apple pie. Thank God, I’m home all day today, and home in the evening… Gentlemen, please come back this evening.
VERSHININ: May I be allowed to come this evening too!
IRINA: Please do.
NATASHA: They are very informal.
CHEBUTYKIN: For love alone nature produced us in the world. (Laughs.)
ANDREY (angrily): Stop it, gentlemen! Aren’t you tired of it.
(Fedotik and Rohde enter with a large basket of flowers.)
FEDOTIK: They are having lunch already.
ROHDE (loudly and lisping): Having lunch? Yes, they’re having lunch already…
FEDOTIK: Wait a minute! (Takes a photograph.) One! Wait a little longer… (Takes another photograph.) Two! Now it’s ready!
(They take the basket and go into the ballroom, where they are greeted noisily.)
ROHDE (loudly): Congratulations, I wish you all the best, the very best! The weather is charming today, just splendid. I spent the whole morning walking with the high school students. I teach gymnastics at the high school…
FEDOTIK: You can move, Irina Sergeyevna, you can! (Taking a photograph.) You look interesting today. (Takes a spinning top from his pocket.) Here, by the way, is a spinning top… Amazing sound…
IRINA: How lovely!
MASHA: The green oak by the curving shore, a golden chain is on that oak… A golden chain is on that oak… (Tearfully.) Oh, why do I say that? That phrase has been stuck in my head all morning…
KULYGIN: Thirteen at the table!
ROHDE (loudly): Gentlemen, surely you don’t attach any importance to superstitions?
(Laughter.)
KULYGIN: If there are thirteen at the table, then it means there are lovers here. It wouldn’t be you, Ivan Romanych, by any chance…
(Laughter.)
CHEBUTYKIN: I am an old sinner, but why Natalya Ivanovna is embarrassed, I simply cannot understand.
(Loud laughter; Natasha runs out of the ballroom into the drawing-room, followed by Andrey.)
ANDREY: That’s enough, pay no attention! Wait… stop, I beg you…
NATASHA: I’m ashamed… I don’t know what’s happening to me, and they’re laughing at me. It’s improper for me to have left the table just now, but I can’t… I can’t… (Covers her face with her hands.)
ANDREY: My dearest, I beg you, I implore you, don’t worry. I assure you, they are joking, they mean well. My dearest, my sweet girl, they are all good, kind-hearted people and they love me and you. Come here by the window, they can’t see us here… (Looks around.)
NATASHA: I’m so unused to being in company!…
ANDREY: Oh, youth, wonderful, beautiful youth! My dearest, my sweet girl, don’t be so upset!… Trust me, trust me… I feel so wonderful, my soul is full of love, of ecstasy… Oh, they don’t see us! They don’t see us! Why, why did I fall in love with you, when I fell in love—oh, I don’t understand anything. My dearest, sweet, pure girl, be my wife! I love you, I love you… as no one ever before…
(A kiss.)
(Two officers enter and, seeing the couple kissing, stop in astonishment.)
(The curtain falls.)
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