The Plays of Anton Chekhov Page 14

  TREPLYOV [entering] : There’s no one left.

  DORN: I’m here.

  TREPLYOV: Mashenka is looking for me all over the park. She’s just intolerable.

  DORN: Konstantin Gavrilovich, I really liked your play. It’s a little strange and I didn’t see the end, and still it made a strong impression. You’re a gifted man, and must go on.

  [TREPLYOV vigorously shakes his hand and impulsively hugs him.]

  Ouf, you’re a nervous chap. Tears in your eyes ... What do I mean? You’ve taken a theme from the realm of abstract ideas. Rightly so, because a work of art absolutely needs to express some great thought. Beauty only lies in what is serious. How pale you are.

  TREPLYOV: So you’re telling me — to carry on?

  DORN: Yes ... But only depict what is important and eternal. You know, I have lived a varied life, I’ve enjoyed it, I am content, but if I ever came to feel the upsurge of spirit which artists have at the moment of creation, I would scorn my material shell and all that belongs to it, and I would be carried up, up from earth.

  TREPLYOV: Excuse me, where is Nina?

  DORN: And something else. A work must contain clear, defined thought. You must know the object of your writing, otherwise, if you go down that picturesque road without a definite aim, you will lose your way and your talent will destroy you.

  TREPLYOV [impatiently]: Where is Nina?

  DORN: She’s gone home.

  TREPLYOV [in despair]: What am I to do? I want to see her ... It is essential I see her ... I will go ...

  [Enter MASHA.]

  DORN [to Treplyov]: Calm down, my friend.

  TREPLYOV: But I will go. I must go to her.

  MASHA: Go into the house, Konstantin Gavrilovich. Your mama is waiting for you. She’s worried.

  TREPLYOV: Tell her I’ve gone. And I beg you all, leave me in peace. Leave me. Don’t follow me.

  DORN: But, but, but, my dear fellow ... you mustn’t ... It’s not right.

  TREPLYOV [with tears in his eyes]: Goodbye, doctor. I’m grateful ... [Exit.]

  DORN [sighing] : Youth, youth!

  MASHA: When there’s nothing more to say, people say youth, youth ... [Takes snuff.]

  DORN [taking her snuffbox from her and throwing it into the bushes]: That’s nasty!

  [A pause.]

  I think they’re playing indoors. We must go.

  MASHA: Wait a moment.

  DORN: What?

  MASHA: I want to tell you something else. I want to talk ... [Nervously] I don’t love my father ... but my heart goes out to you. For some reason I feel with all my soul that you are close to me ... Help me. Help me, or I’ll do something foolish, I’ll make a mockery of my life, I’ll spoil it ... I can’t any longer ...

  DORN: What? Help you in what?

  MASHA: I’m so unhappy. No one, no one knows how unhappy I am. [Laying her head on his breast, quietly] I love Konstantin.

  DORN: You’re all so highly strung. So highly strung. And such a lot of love ... 0 enchanted lake! [Affectionately] But what can I do, my child? What, what can I do?

  [Curtain.]

  Act Two

  A croquet lawn. Backstage on the right the house, with a big terrace, on the left the lake with the sun’s reflection shining on it. Flowerbeds. Midday. It is hot. To one side of the croquet lawn, in the shade of an old lime, ARKADINA, DORN and MASHA are sitting on a bench. On Dorn’s knees is an open book.

  ARKADINA [to Masha]: Let’s stand up.

  [They both get up.]

  Let’s stand side by side. You are twenty-two and I am almost twice that. Yevgeny Sergeich, which of us looks younger?

  DORN: You, of course.

  ARKADINA: So ... And why is that? Because I work, I feel, I am constantly busy, but you are always sitting in one place, you don’t live ... And I have a rule: don’t look into the future. I never think of old age or death. What will be will be.

  MASHA: And I feel as if I’d been born long, long ago; I carry my life about with me, like the endless train of a dress ... And often I have no urge to live. [Sits down.] Of course this is all nonsense. I must pull myself together, get rid of it all.

  DORN [sings softly]: ‘Tell her, flowers mine ...’1

  ARKADINA: Then, I am correct as an Englishman. My dear, I keep myself, as they say, in training, and my clothes and hair are always comme il faut.2 Would I let myself go out of the house, even just into the garden here, in a house-coat or without doing my hair? Never. I have lasted because I have never been slovenly, I have never let myself go, like some. [Walks across the croquet lawn with arms akimbo.] There — like a young bird. I could play a girl of fifteen.

  DORN: Well, I’ll go on anyway. [Takes up the book.] We stopped at the corn chandler and the rats ...

  ARKADINA: And the rats. Read on. [Sits down.] No, give it to me, I’ll read. My turn. [Takes the book and searches through it.] And the rats ... Here it is ... [Reads] ‘And of course it is just as risky for fashionable folk to pamper novelists and take them to their bosoms as it is for a corn chandler to breed rats in his barns. But they love them. And so, when a woman has chosen the writer whom she wants to snare, she lays siege to him with compliments, favours and treats ...’ Well, maybe the French do, but we have nothing like that, nothing so programmatic. Here a woman, before she sets out to capture a writer, is usually — excuse me — head over heels in love herself. Without going very far — take me and Trigorin ...

  [Enter SORIN leaning on a stick, and with him NINA; MEDVEDENKO follows pushing an empty wheelchair.]

  SORIN [in the tone people use to make up to children]: Well? Are we happy? Are we cheerful at last today? [To his sister] We are happy. Father and stepmother have gone to Tver, and we are free now for three whole days.

  NINA [sitting down by Arkadina and embracing her]: I am happy. I’m one of you now.

  SORIN [sitting in his wheelchair]: She’s rather pretty today.

  ARKADINA: Elegant, attractive ... You’re a clever girl. [Kisses Nina.] But we mustn’t praise you too much or we’ll bring bad luck. Where’s Boris Alekseyevich?

  NINA: He’s fishing at the bathing place.

  ARKADINA: Why doesn’t he get bored? [Settles to resume her reading.]

  NINA: What are you reading?

  ARKADINA: Maupassant’s Sur l’eau,3dear. [Reads a few lines to herself.] Well, it gets uninteresting and false. [Shuts the book.] My heart is anxious. Tell me, what is the matter with my son? Why is he so boring and grim? He spends whole days on the lake and I hardly see him at all.

  MASHA: He’s depressed. [To Nina, shyly] Please, read from his play.

  NINA [shrugging her shoulders]: Do you want me to? It’s so uninteresting.

  MASHA [controlling her feelings]: When he reads something himself, his eyes burn and his face turns pale. He has a beautiful, melancholy voice; and the manner of a poet.

  [SORIN can be heard snoring.]

  DORN: Good night!

  ARKADINA: Petrusha!

  SORIN: Ah!

  ARKADINA: Did you go to sleep?

  SORIN: Certainly not.

  [A pause.]

  ARKADINA: You’re not having any medical treatment, and that’s bad, brother.

  SORIN: I’d be glad to, but Doctor here doesn’t want me to have any.

  DORN: Prescriptions for a sixty-year-old!

  SORIN: Even at sixty one wants to live.

  DORN [crossly]: Oh! Well, take valerian drops.4

  ARKADINA: I think it would be good for him to go somewhere and take the waters.

  DORN: Well? He can go. Or not go.

  ARKADINA: So try and understand.

  DORN: There’s nothing to understand. Everything is clear.

  [A pause.]

  MEDVEDENKO: Pyotr Nikolayevich ought to give up smoking.

  SORIN: Rubbish.

  DORN: No, not rubbish. Alcohol and tobacco take away your personality. After a cigar or a glass of vodka you are no longer Pyotr Nikolayevich but Pyotr Nikolayevich plus someone el
se; your ‘I’ dissolves and you relate to yourself like a third person — ‘he’.

  SORIN [laughing]: It’s all very well for you to argue. You’ve had a good life, but what about me? I served twenty-eight years in the Department of Justice, but never began to live. I finished without any experience of life, and understandably I very much want to live. You are well fed, things don’t matter to you and so you are inclined towards philosophy; I want to live and so I drink sherry at dinner and smoke cigars and so on and so on. You know.

  DORN: One must have a serious attitude to life, and to go for medical treatment aged sixty, to regret not having had much pleasure in youth is — forgive me — silly.

  MASHA [getting up]: It must be time to have lunch. [Walks with slow, slack steps.] My leg’s gone to sleep ... [Exit.]

  DORN: She’ll go and put down two glasses before lunch.

  SORIN: The poor thing has no personal happiness.

  DORN: Empty words, Your Excellency.5

  SORIN: You’re arguing like a well-fed man.

  ARKADINA: Oh, what can be more boring than this nice rural tedium. It’s hot, it’s quiet, everyone talks philosophy ... It’s good to be with you, my friends, pleasant to listen to you, but ... to sit in a hotel room and learn a part is so much better.

  NINA [ecstatically]: Splendid! I understand you.

  SORIN: Of course it’s better in town. You sit in your study, your man lets no one in without announcing them, there’s the telephone ... there are cabs on the street and so on and so on ...

  DORN [singing] : ‘Tell her, flowers mine ...’

  [Enter SHAMRAYEV followed by POLINA ANDREYEVNA.]

  SHAMRAYEV: Here they are. Good afternoon. [Kisses Arkadina’s hand, then Nina’s.] I’m so glad to see you in good health. [To Arkadina] My wife says you’re planning to go together to town today.

  ARKADINA: Yes, that’s the plan.

  SHAMRAYEV: Hm ... That’s splendid, but what will you go in, dear lady? We’re bringing in the rye today, all the men are taken up. And may I ask you what horses you will use?

  ARKADINA: What horses? How do I know what horses!

  SORIN: We have the carriage horses.

  SHAMRAYEV [getting agitated]: The carriage horses? And where will I get harnesses? Where will I get harnesses? This is astonishing! Beyond comprehension! My dear lady! Excuse me, I worship your talent, I’m ready to give ten years of my life for you, but I cannot give you horses!

  ARKADINA: But what if I have to go? A strange business!

  SHAMRAYEV: Dear lady! You do not know what farming means!

  ARKADINA [losing her temper]: An old story! In that case I am leaving for Moscow today. Get them to take horses for me in the village or I’ll walk to the station on foot!

  SHAMRAYEV [losing his temper]: In that case I resign! Find yourself another manager! [Exit.]

  ARKADINA: Every summer is like this, every summer I am insulted! I won’t set foot here again! [Goes out left, where the bathing place must be; in a minute she is seen passing to the house followed by TRIG ORIN with fishing rods and a bucket.]

  SORIN [losing his temper]: Impertinence! What the hell! At the end of the day I’ve had enough. Bring all the horses out here at once!

  NINA[to Polina Andreyevna]: To refuse Irina Nikolayevna, the famous actress! Is not her every wish, even caprice, more important than your farming? Just unthinkable!

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA [in despair]: What can I do? Put yourself in my position: what can I do?

  SORIN [to Nina]: Let’s go to my sister ... We will all beg her not to leave. All right? [Looking in the direction where SHAMRAYEV went off.] Intolerable man! A tyrant!

  NINA [preventing him from standing up]: Sit down, sit ... We will take you. [She and MEDVEDENKO wheel the chair.] Oh how awful this is!

  SORIN: Yes, yes, it’s awful. But he won’t leave. I shall speak to him right away.

  [Exeunt; only DORN and POLINA ANDREYEVNA are left.]

  DORN: People are boring. Really your husband should be thrown out of here on his ear, but it will all end with that old woman Pyotr Nikolayevich and his sister begging his pardon. You’ll see.

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA: He sent out the carriage horses into the fields too. And every day there are misunderstandings like this. If you knew how it upsets me! I get ill; do you see, I am trembling ... I can’t stand his rudeness. [Imploringly] Yevgeny, my dear, my beloved, take me into your home ... Our time is passing, we are no longer young, and if only, at the end of our lives, we could just stop concealing and lying ...

  [A pause.]

  DORN: I am fifty-five, it’s too late now to change my life.

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA: I know, you’re refusing me because there are other women besides me who are close to you. You can’t take them all in. I understand. Forgive me, I get on your nerves.

  [NINA appears near the house; she is picking flowers.]

  DORN: No, not at all.

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA: I suffer from jealousy. Of course you are a doctor, you can’t avoid women. I understand ...

  DORN [to NINA, who comes up]: How is it in there?

  NINA: Irina Nikolayevna is crying and Pyotr Nikolayevich has asthma.

  DORN [getting up]: Let’s go and give both of them valerian drops.

  NINA [giving him the flowers]: Here!

  DORN: Merci bien. [Goes towards the house.]

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA [going with him]: What pretty flowers! [By the house, in a low voice] Give me those flowers! Give me those flowers! [Having got the flowers, she pulls them apart and throws them aside; both go into the house.]

  NINA [alone]: How strange to see a famous actress crying, and for such a silly reason! And strange that a famous writer — the darling of the public, stories about him in all the papers, his picture for sale, translated into foreign languages — spends all day fishing and is delighted to have caught a couple of chub. I thought famous people were proud and unapproachable, that they despised the world and that through their fame, through the glory of their name, they as it were took their revenge on the world for valuing high birth and wealth above all else. But here they cry, fish, play cards and get angry, like everyone else ...

  TREPLYOV [enters without a hat, carrying a gun and a dead seagull]: Are you alone here?

  NINA: Yes, alone.

  [TREPLYOV lays the seagull at her feet.]

  What does that mean?

  TREPLYOV: I was a brute and killed this seagull today. I lay it at your feet.

  NINA: What’s the matter with you? [Picks up the seagull and looks at it.]

  TREPLYOV [after a pause]: Soon I’ll kill myself like this.

  NINA: I don’t recognize you.

  TREPLYOV: Yes, since I stopped recognizing you. You’ve changed towards me, your eyes are cold, my presence embarrasses you.

  NINA: You’ve become irritable recently, you express yourself incomprehensibly, in some kind of symbolic language. And this seagull is clearly a symbol but, forgive me, I don’t understand ... [Puts the seagull on the bench.] I’m too simple to understand you.

  TREPLYOV: It started on the evening of my play’s stupid failure. Women don’t forgive failure. I burnt the lot, to the last scrap of paper. If you only knew how unhappy I am! Your coldness is frightening, incredible, as if I woke up and saw that this lake had suddenly dried up or flowed into the ground. You’ve just said that you’re too simple to understand me. Oh, what is there to understand here? My play failed to please, you despise my inspiration, you now think I’m commonplace, worthless, like many others ... [Stamping his foot.] How well I understand that, how I understand! It’s as if I had a nail driven into my brain — damn it and my pride, which sucks my blood, sucks it like a serpent ... [Seeing TRIGORIN who is walking reading a notebook.] Here comes the true talent; he steps like Hamlet, and with a book too. [Mockingly] ‘Words, words, words ...’6 This sun hasn’t yet reached you, but you’re already smiling, your gaze has melted in his beams. I won’t get in your way. [Goes out quickly.]

  TRIGORIN [w
riting in his notebook]: Takes snuff and vodka ... Always wears black. The schoolmaster’s in love with her ...

  NINA: Good afternoon, Boris Alekseyevich.

  TRIGORIN: Good afternoon. I think we’re leaving today, unexpectedly. We probably won’t see each other again. A pity. I don’t often get to meet young girls, young and interesting girls. I’ve now forgotten and can’t clearly imagine what it feels like to be eighteen or nineteen, and so in my novels and stories the girls are usually false. I would like to be in your place just for an hour to find out how you think ... and generally what kind of little thing you are.

  NINA: And I would like to be in your place.

  TRIGORIN: Why?

  NINA: To learn how a famous and talented writer feels. What does being famous feel like? How do you sense that you’re famous?

  TRIGORIN: How? Of course, I don’t. I’ve never thought about that. [Thinking] It’s one of two things: either you’re exaggerating my fame, or else it can’t be felt at all.

  NINA: And if you read about yourself in the papers?

  TRIGORIN: It’s pleasant when it’s praise, and when it’s abuse you feel out of sorts for a couple of days.

  NINA: It’s a wonderful world! How I envy you, if only you knew! People’s lots are very different. Some barely drag out their tedious, unnoticed existence, each of them just like the others, all of them unhappy; others, like you for instance, are given a life that is interesting, bright, full of meaning ... you’re happy ...