The Plays of Anton Chekhov Read online

TREPLYOV: A most noble person! Here we are virtually quarrelling because of him, and he’s now somewhere in the drawing-room or garden laughing at us ... he’s working on Nina’s development, trying to convince her once and for all that he is a genius.

  ARKADINA: You find pleasure in saying nasty things to me. I admire that man and I beg you not to speak badly of him in front of me.

  TREPLYOV: And I don’t admire him. You want me too to think him a genius, but I’m sorry, I can’t lie, his books make me feel sick.

  ARKADINA: It’s jealousy. People with aspirations but no talent have nothing left but to criticize genuine talent. What a consolation for them!

  TREPLYOV [with irony]: Genuine talent! [Angrily] If it comes to that, I’m more talented than all of you! [Rips the bandage off his head.] You slaves of convention have grabbed the prime places in the arts and you only recognize your own activities as legitimate and real, and everything else you crush and stifle. I do not recognize any of you. I don’t recognize either you or him.

  ARKADINA: Young decadent!

  TREPLYOV: Go off to your darling theatre and act there in pathetic, talentless plays!

  ARKADINA: I have never appeared in plays like that. Leave me alone! You’re not capable of writing even a wretched little vaudeville sketch. Kiev bourgeois! Parasite!

  TREPLYOV: Skinflint!

  ARKADINA: Dirty tramp!

  [TREPLYOV sits down and quietly weeps.]

  Worthless creature! [Walks to and fro, upset.] Don’t cry. You mustn’t cry ... [Weeps.] You mustn’t ... [Kisses him on the forehead, cheeks and head.] My darling child, forgive me ... Forgive your wicked mother. Forgive me, I’m unhappy.

  TREPLYOV [embracing her]: If you knew! I’ve lost everything. She doesn’t love me. I can’t write any more, all my hopes are gone ...

  ARKADINA: Don’t despair ... Everything will be all right. He’ll go away now, she will love you again. [Wiping away his tears.] Stop it. We’ve now made up.

  TREPLYOV [kissing her hand]: Yes, Mama.

  ARKADINA [affectionately]: Make your peace with him too. You mustn’t have a duel ... Must you?

  TREPLYOV: Very well ... Only, Mama, don’t let me see him. It’s hard for me ... more than I can stand ...

  [Enter TRIGORIN.]

  Here he is ... I’ll go out. [Quickly puts the medicines away in the cupboard.] And the doctor will do the bandage later ...

  TRIGORIN [looking in a book]: Page 121 ... lines 11 and 12 ... Here it is ... [Reads] ‘If ever you need my life, come and take it.’

  [TREPLYOV picks up the bandage from the floor and goes out.]

  ARKADINA [glancing at the clock]: They’ll bring the horses soon.

  TRIGORIN [to himself]: If ever you need my life, come and take it.

  ARKADINA : I hope all your things are packed now.

  TRIGORIN [impatiently]: Yes, yes. [Musing] Why do I hear sadness in this appeal from a pure spirit, why is my heart so painfully constricted? ... If ever you need my life, come and take it. [To Arkadina] Let’s stay one more day.

  [ARKADINA shakes her head.]

  Let’s stay!

  ARKADINA: My dear, I know what’s holding you here. But control yourself. You’ve got a little tipsy, sober up.

  TRIGORIN: You too must be sober, must be intelligent and show good sense; I beg you, just take a look at all of this as a real friend ... [Presses her hand.] You’re capable of sacrifices. Be my friend, release me ...

  ARKADINA [with strong emotion]: Are you so infatuated?

  TRIGORIN: I am called to her! Perhaps it is just what I need.

  ARKADINA: The love of a provincial girl? Oh, how little you know yourself!

  TRIGORIN: Sometimes people sleep on their feet, so while I’m talking to you it’s as if I’m sleeping and seeing her in a dream ... I am overcome by sweet, wondrous dreams ... Let me go ...

  ARKADINA [trembling]: No, no ... I am an ordinary woman, you mustn’t talk to me like that ... Don’t torment me, Boris ... I’m afraid ...

  TRIGORIN: If you want, you can rise above the ordinary. Young, beautiful, poetic love that transports us into the world of dreams — that’s the only thing on earth that can give happiness! I’ve never felt such love ... When I was young I had no time, I was hanging round the doors of publishers, struggling with poverty ... Now this love has come, at last, it summons me ... What sense is there in running away from it?

  ARKADINA [in anger]: You’re out of your mind.

  TRIGORIN: Well?

  ARKADINA: Today you have all conspired to torment me! [Weeps.]

  TRIGORIN [putting his head in his hands]: She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t want to understand.

  ARKADINA: Am I really now so old and ugly that you can talk to me of other women with no shame? [Hugs and kisses him.] Oh, you have gone mad! My beautiful, wonderful man! ... The last page of my life! [Falls on her knees.] If you leave me even for a single hour I won’t survive. I shall go out of my mind, my marvellous, magnificent man, my conqueror ...

  TRIGORIN: Someone might come in. [Helps her get up.]

  ARKADINA: Let them, I am not ashamed of my love for you. [Kisses his hands.] My treasure, my wild man, you want to behave like a lunatic, but I don’t want you to, I won’t let you ... [Laughing] You are mine ... you are mine ... This forehead is mine, and these eyes are mine, and this beautiful silky hair is mine too ... You are all mine. You are so talented, so wise, the best of all writers today, you are Russia’s one hope ... You have such reserves of sincerity, simplicity, freshness, sane humour ... In a single line you can convey the essence of a person or a landscape, your characters are alive. Oh, no one can read you without going into ecstasy! Do you think this praise is absurd? Am I a flatterer? Come, look into my eyes ... look here ... Do I look like a liar? You see, only I can appreciate you; only I tell you the truth, my dearest, wonderful friend ... Will you come? You will? You won’t abandon me? ...

  TRIGORIN: I have no will of my own ... I never had a will of my own ... Feeble, flabby, always giving in — can that really appeal to a woman? Take me, carry me off, but just don’t let me one step away from you ...

  ARKADINA [to herself]: Now he’s mine. [Lightly, as if nothing had happened] But if you want to you can stay. I myself will go off and you’ll come on later, in a week’s time. In fact, what’s the hurry?

  TRIGORIN: No, let’s leave together.

  ARKADINA: As you like. Together it is ...

  [A pause. TRIGORIN writes in his notebook.]

  What are you doing?

  TRIGORIN: This morning I heard a good phrase, ‘the virgins’ wood’ ... It’ll come in handy. [Stretches.] So, we are leaving? Back to railway carriages, stations, buffets, chops, conversations with strangers ...

  SHAMRAYEV [entering]: I have the melancholy honour of announcing that the horses are ready. It is now time, dear lady, to leave for the station; the train arrives at five minutes past two. Irina Nikolayevna, be so kind as not to forget to make a little inquiry: where is the actor Suzdaltsev now? Is he alive? Is he well? Once upon a time we used to drink together ... He gave an inimitable performance in The Post Office Robbery3 ... I remember the tragedian Izmaylov worked with him in Yelizavetgrad — another remarkable personality ... Do not hurry, dear lady, you can have another five minutes. They were once playing two conspirators in a melodrama, and when they were suddenly discovered, the words were ‘We have fallen into a trap’, but Izmaylov said, ‘We have fallen into a prat.’ [Laughs noisily.] Prat! ...

  [While he is speaking, YAKOV is busy by the trunks, the maid brings Arkadina her hat, coat, parasol and gloves; they all help Arkadina to dress. The COOK looks in at the left-hand door and after a moment comes in awkwardly. POLINA ANDREYEVNA enters, then SORIN and MEDVEDENKO.]

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA [holding a little basket]: Here are some plums for your journey ... They’re very sweet. Perhaps you’ll feel like a little treat.

  ARKADINA: You are very kind, Polina Andreyevna.

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA: Goodbye, my dear.
If anything wasn’t quite right, forgive me. [Cries.]

  ARKADINA [embracing her]: Everything was all right, everything was all right. Only you mustn’t cry.

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA: Our time is passing.

  ARKADINA: What can we do!

  SORIN [wearing an overcoat with a cape and a hat, and carrying a stick, comes in at the left-hand door; walking across the room]: Sister, it’s time, we mustn’t be late after all that. I’m going to get in the carriage. [Exit.]

  MEDVEDENKO: And I’ll walk to the station ... to see you off. I’ll walk fast. [Exit.]

  ARKADINA: Goodbye, my dears ... If we’re alive and well, we’ll meet again next summer ...

  [Themaid, YAKOV and the COOK kiss her hand.]

  Don’t forget me. [Gives the cook a rouble.] Here’s a rouble for the three of you.

  COOK: Our humble thanks, my lady. Have a good journey. We’re very grateful to you.

  YAKOV: God bless you!

  SHAMRAYEV: Cheer us up with a little letter. Goodbye, Boris Alekseyevich.

  ARKADINA: Where’s Konstantin? Tell him I’m leaving. We must say goodbye. Well, think of me kindly. [To Yakov] I gave a rouble to the cook. That’s for the three of you.

  [All go out at right. The stage is empty. Offstage there is the usual noise of people saying goodbye. The maid returns to take the basket of plums from the table and goes out again.]

  TRIGORIN [returning]: I forgot my walking-stick. I think it’s out there on the terrace. [Goes towardsthe left-hand door and meets NINA coming in.] You here? We’re leaving ...

  NINA: I felt we would see each other once more. [Excitedly] Boris Alekseyevich, I have taken an irrevocable decision, the die is cast, I’m going on the stage. Tomorrow I won’t be here, I’m leaving my father, leaving everything and beginning a new life ... I’m going like you ... to Moscow. We’ll see each other there.

  TRIGORIN [lookinground]: Stay at the Slavyansky Bazaar4 ... Get word to me at once ... The Grokholsky Building on Molchanovka ... I’m in a hurry.

  [A pause.]

  NINA: One minute more ...

  TRIGORIN [in a low voice]: You’re so beautiful ... Oh, the happiness of thinking that we shall soon see each other!

  [She rests her head on his breast.]

  I’ll see those wonderful eyes again, that inexpressibly beautiful, tender smile ... that gentle face, angelically pure expression ... My darling ...

  [A prolonged kiss.]

  [Curtain.]

  [Two years pass between Acts Three and Four.]

  Act Four

  One of the reception rooms in Sorin’s house, which Konstantin Treplyov has turned into a study. Right and left are doors leading to rooms inside the house; at centre, French windows on to the terrace. Apart from the usual drawing-room furniture, in the right-hand corner is a writing-desk, by the left-hand door a Turkish divan; a bookcase, books on the windowsills and on the chairs.Evening. A single lamp is burning under a shade. Semi-darkness. The trees are groaning and the wind is howling in the chimneys. The night-watchman knocks. Enter MEDVEDENKO and MASHA.

  MASHA [calling]: Konstantin Gavrilych! Konstantin Gavrilych! [Looks around.] There’s no one. The old man asks every minute, where’s Kostya, where’s Kostya ... He can’t live without him ...

  MEDVEDENKO: He’s frightened of being alone. [Listening.] What terrible weather. It’s the second day now.

  MASHA [turningup the flame in the lamp]: There are waves on the lake. Huge ones.

  MEDVEDENKO: It’s dark in the garden. We must tell them to pull down that theatre in the garden. It stands there like a skeleton, bare and ugly, and the curtain bangs in the wind. When I walked by it yesterday evening, it seemed to me as if someone was weeping there.

  MASHA: Well, well ...

  [A pause.]

  MEDVEDENKO: Masha, let’s go home.

  MASHA [shaking her head]: I’m going to spend the night here.

  MEDVEDENKO [imploringly] : Masha, let’s go! The baby must be hungry.

  MASHA: Nonsense. Matryona will feed him.

  [A pause.]

  MEDVEDENKO: Poor boy. It’s the third night without his mother.

  MASHA: You’ve become a bore. At least you once used to give us a bit of philosophy, but now it’s just — the baby, home, the baby, home — and that’s all anyone ever hears from you.

  MEDVEDENKO: Let’s go, Masha.

  MASHA: Go yourself.

  MEDVEDENKO: Your father won’t give me a horse.

  MASHA: He will. Ask him and he’ll give you one.

  MEDVEDENKO: I think I will ask. So you’ll come home tomorrow?

  MASHA [taking snuff]: Mm, tomorrow. You’re nagging me ...

  [Enter TREPLYOV and POLINA ANDREYEVNA; TREPLYOV has brought pillows and a blanket and POLINA ANDREYEVNA bed linen; they put them on the Turkish divan, then TREPLYOV goes to his writing-desk and sits down.]

  What’s this for, Mama?

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA: Pyotr Nikolayevich asked for his bed to be made up in Kostya’s room.

  MASHA: Let me ... [Makes the bed.]

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA [sighing]: An old man’s the same as a child ... [Goes to the desk and, leaning on her elbows, looks at a manuscript; a pause.]

  MEDVEDENKO: So I’ll go. Goodbye, Masha. [Kisses his wife’s hand.] Goodbye, Mother. [Tries to kiss his mother-in-law’s hand.]

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA [crossly]: That’s enough. Off you go, God bless.

  MEDVEDENKO: Goodbye, Konstantin Gavrilych.

  [TREPLYOV silently gives his hand. MEDVEDENKO goes out.]

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA [looking at the manuscript]: No one thought or guessed, Kostya, that you would make a real writer. And now, thank God, magazines have begun to send you money. [Strokes his hair.]And you’ve become handsome ... Dear, good Kostya, be a little nicer to my Mashenka ...

  MASHA [making the bed]: Let him be, Mama.

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA [to Treplyov]: She’s a dear.

  [A pause.]

  Kostya, a woman doesn’t need much, only the odd tender look. I know that from my own experience.

  [TREPLYOV gets up from his desk and silently goes out.]

  MASHA: There, you’ve made him angry. You had to go and annoy him!

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA: I’m sorry for you, Mashenka.

  MASHA: Very helpful!

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA: My heart has bled for you. I see everything, you know, I understand everything.

  MASHA: It’s all nonsense. Hopeless love only exists in novels. It’s rubbish. Only you mustn’t let yourself go and carry on waiting, waiting by the sea for the weather to change ... Once love has flowered in your heart, out with it. They’ve promised to transfer my husband to another district. Once we move there I’ll forget everything ... I’ll rip it out of my heart by the roots.

  [From two rooms away come the sounds of a melancholy waitz.]

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA : Kostya’s playing. That means he’s depressed.

  MASHA [silently making two or three turns of a waltz]: The main thing, Mama, is not to have him in front of my eyes. If only my Semyon gets the transfer, believe me, I’ll forget in a month. It’s all rubbish.

  [The left-hand door opens. DORN and MEDVEDENKO wheel in SORIN in his chair.]

  MEDVEDENKO : I now have six people at home. And flour is seventy kopecks the pud.

  DORN: So you must just try and get along.

  MEDVEDENKO : It’s all very well for you to laugh. You’re rolling in money.

  DORN : Money? My friend, in thirty years of practice, tireless practice when I didn’t have day or night to myself, I only managed to save two thousand roubles — and that I spent abroad the other day. I’ve got nothing.

  MASHA [to her husband] : Haven’t you gone?

  MEDVEDENKO [guiltily]: What do you expect? When I’m not given a horse!

  MASHA [in a low voice, in a bitter rage] : Just get out of my sight!

  [The wheelchair comes to a stop in the left half of the room; POLINA ANDREYEVNA, MASHA and DORN sit down by it; MEDVED-ENKO goes
offtoone side, in depression.]

  DORN : Well, what a lot of changes you’ve made! A study out of a drawing-room.

  MASHA : It’s easier for Konstantin Gavrilych to work here. He can go out into the garden and think there whenever he wants.

  [The watchman knocks.]

  SORIN : Where’s my sister?

  DORN : She’s gone to the station to meet Trigorin. She’ll be back right away.

  SORIN : If you thought it necessary to write for my sister, I must be seriously ill. [After a silence.] Only here’s a funny thing, I’m seriously ill but I’m still given no medicine.

  DORN : Well, what do you want? Valerian drops? Bicarbonate of soda? Quinine?

  SORIN : The philosophy lesson begins. What a punishment! [Nodding at the divan.] Is that made up for me?

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA: For you, Pyotr Nikolayevich.

  SORIN : Thank you.

  DORIN [sings]: ‘The moon she sails in the sky of night ...’

  SORIN : Now I want to give Kostya an idea for a story. It should be called ‘The man who wanted to’ — ‘L ‘Homme qui a voulu’. When I was young, at one time I wanted to become a writer — and didn’t; I wanted to speak well — and spoke abominably [mimics himself]. ‘And so on and so on, what with this and that ...’ I used to sum up, sum up till the sweat poured off me; I wanted to marry and didn’t; I always wanted to live in town and here I am ending my life in the country, and so on and so on.