The Plays of Anton Chekhov Read online

  SONYA: What’s the matter, Granny?

  MARIYA VASILYEVNA: I forgot to tell Aleksandr ... I’m losing my memory ... today I got a letter from Pavel Alekseyevich in Kharkov ... He sent me his new pamphlet ...

  ASTROV : Is it interesting?

  MARIYA VASILYEVNA : Interesting but rather strange. He rejects a position that seven years ago he himself was defending. It’s disgraceful!

  VOYNITSKY : There’s nothing disgraceful about it. Drink your tea, Maman.

  MARIYA VASILYEVNA : But I want to talk!

  VOYNITSKY : You’ve been talking now for fifty years, talking and reading pamphlets. Time to stop.

  MARIYA VASILYEVNA : For some reason you find it unpleasant to listen when I talk. I’m sorry, Jean,6 but in the last year you’ve changed so that I just don’t know you. You were a man of definite convictions, a man of enlightenment ...

  VOYNITSKY : Oh yes! I was a man of enlightenment, who gave no one any light ...

  [A pause.]

  I was a man of enlightenment ... You could not make a more poisonous joke! I am now forty-seven. Till last year, like you, I deliberately tried to cloud my eyes with your learned talk, so as not to see real life — and I thought I was doing right. And now if you only knew! At nights I don’t sleep from vexation, from anger that I so foolishly lost the time when I could have had everything that my age now denies me!

  SONYA : Uncle Vanya, you’re being a bore!

  MARIYA VASILYEVNA [to her son]: You’re just blaming your former beliefs for something ... But they’re not to blame, you are. You forget that beliefs alone are nothing, a dead letter ... What you needed was action.

  VOYNITSKY : Action? Not everyone can be a scribbling perpetuum mobile like your Herr Professor.

  MARIYA VASILYEVNA: What do you mean?

  SONYA [in a pleading voice]: Granny! Uncle Vanya! I beg you!

  VOYNITSKY : I’ll shut up. I’ll shut up and apologize.

  [A pause.]

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: The weather is lovely today ... It isn’t hot...

  [A pause.]

  VOYNITSKY : Lovely weather for hanging oneself ...

  [TELEGIN tunes the guitar. MARINA walks near the house and calls the chickens.]

  MARINA : Tsyp, tsyp, tsyp ... 7

  SONYA : Nyanya dear, why did the men come? ...

  MARINA: The same thing, about the waste land again. Tsyp, tsyp, tsyp.

  SONYA : Which one are you calling?

  MARINA : The speckled one’s gone off with her chicks ... I’m worried the crows will get them ... [Exit.]

  [TELEGIN plays a polka; they all listen in silence; enter a WORKMAN.]

  WORKMAN: Is the doctor gentleman here? [To Astrov] Please, Mikhail Lvovich, they’ve come for you.

  ASTROV : Where from?

  WORKMAN: The factory.

  ASTROV [crossly]: Thank you so much. Well, I must go ... [Looks around for his cap.] It makes me angry, damn it ...

  SONYA : It’s really annoying ... Come and have dinner, when you get back from the factory.

  ASTROV : No, it’ll be late. Where on earth ... [To the workman] Be a good chap and bring me a glass of vodka. [The WORKMAN goes out.] Where on earth ... [Finds his cap.] In some play of Ostrovsky’s there’s a character8 with a big moustache and small gifts ... Like me. Well, my friends, goodbye ... [To Yelena Andreyevna] I’ll be really pleased if you and Sofya Aleksandrovna come and see me some time. I’ve a little place, just thirty desyatinas, but if you’re interested, I have a first-rate garden and you won’t find a nursery like mine within a thousand versts. Next door is the state forest ... The forester there is old and always ill, so in practice I run it all.

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA : I’ve already been told that you really love the forests. Of course, that can be very useful, but doesn’t it get in the way of your true calling? You’re a doctor.

  ASTROV : Only God knows where our true calling lies.

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA : And is forestry interesting?

  ASTROV : Yes, it’s interesting work.

  VOYNITSKY [sacrastically]: Most interesting!

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA [to Astrov] : You’re still a young man, you look — well, thirty-six, thirty-seven - and it can’t be as interesting as you say. Just trees and trees. Monotonous, I would think.

  SONYA : No, it’s extraordinarily interesting. Every year Mikhail Lvovich plants new woods and he’s already been given a bronze medal and a diploma. He campaigns against the destruction of old forests. If you listen to him you’ll find yourself in complete agreement with him. He says that forests embellish the earth, they teach man to understand beauty, they inspire ideals in him. Forests alleviate a climate’s harshness. In countries with a gentle climate less energy is spent on the struggle with nature, and so man is gentler there, more delicate; people are handsome, versatile, easily aroused, their speech is refined, their movements graceful. The arts and sciences flourish among them, their philosophy isn’t gloomy, their attitude to women is fine and noble ...

  VOYNITSKY [laughing] : Bravo, bravo! ... All that is charming but unconvincing, so [to Astrov], my friend, you must let me go on stoking stoves with logs and building sheds of wood.

  ASTROV : You can burn peat in your stoves and build your sheds of stone. Well, I grant you can cut down forests out of need, but why destroy them? The forests of Russia are being wiped out by the axe, thousands of millions of trees are dying, the homes of animals and birds are being laid waste, river levels are dropping and drying up, wonderful scenery vanishes for ever, and all because lazy man hasn’t the sense to bend down and pick up fuel from the ground. [To Yelena Andreyevna] Am I not right, Madame? One has to be a mindless barbarian to burn such beauty in a stove, to destroy what we cannot create. Man is endowed with reason and creative power in order to increase what he is given, but hitherto he has not created but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests ... rivers are drying up, game is becoming extinct, the climate is damaged and every day the earth is becoming poorer and uglier. [To Voynitsky] You’re looking at me ironically and think all I’m saying isn’t serious, and ... and perhaps this really is just craziness, but when I go past the peasants’ woods, which I saved from destruction, or when I hear the hum of my young trees, which I planted with my own hands, I know the climate is a little in my control and that if in a thousand years man is happy, the responsibility for that will in a small way be mine. When I plant a birch and then watch it come into leaf and sway in the wind, my spirit fills with pride and I ... [Seeing the WORKMAN, who has brought in a glass of vodka on a tray] However ... [drinking] I must go. All this is probably craziness, after all. I bid you farewell! [Goes towards the house.]

  SONYA [taking his arm and walking with him]: When will you be back?

  ASTROV : I don’t know.

  SONYA : In another month’s time? ...

  [ASTROV and SONYA go into the house; MARIYA VASILYEVNA and TELEGIN remain by the table; YELENA ANDREYEVNA and VOYNITSKY go towards the terrace.]

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA : Ivan Petrovich, you again behaved impossibly. You had to go and annoy your mother and talk of the perpetuum mobile. And today at lunch you quarrelled again with Aleksandr. How petty you are!

  VOYNITSKY: But if I hate him?

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA : There’s no reason to hate Aleksandr, he’s the same as everyone else. No worse than you.

  VOYNITSKY : If you could see your face, your movements ... What indolence you have towards life! Ah, what indolence!

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA : Ah yes, indolence and boredom! Everyone criticizes my husband, everyone looks at me with pity: unhappy woman, she has an old husband! That sympathy — I understand it well! As Astrov said just now: all of you are mindlessly destroying the forests and soon there’ll be nothing left on earth. In the same way you mindlessly destroy a man, and soon thanks to you the earth will have neither loyalty, nor purity, nor the capacity for self-sacrifice. Why can’t you look at a woman neutrally if she isn’t yours? Because — that doctor is right — in all of you sits a dev
il of destruction. You have no pity for the forests or the birds or each other.

  VOYNITSKY : I don’t like this philosophy!

  [A pause.]

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA : The Doctor has a nervous, exhausted face. An interesting face. Sonya is obviously attracted by him; she is in love with him and I understand her. Since I came he’s already been here three times, but I’m shy and I haven’t talked with him as I should, I haven’t been nice to him. He thinks I’m ill-natured. Ivan Petrovich, we are probably such friends because we’re both tiresome, boring people! Tiresome! Don’t look at me like that, I don’t like it.

  VOYNITSKY : Can I look at you otherwise, if I love you? You are my happiness, my life, my youth! I know my chances of your reciprocating are negligible, next to nothing, but I don’t need anything, just let me look at you, hear your voice.

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA : Quiet, someone might hear you!

  [They go into the house.]

  VOYNITSKY [following her] : Allow me to speak of my love, don’t drive me away — just that will be the greatest happiness for me ...

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA : This is agonizing ...

  [TELEGIN plucks the strings and plays a polka; MARIYA VASILYEVNA makes some notes in the margins of her pamphlet.]

  [Curtain.]

  Act Two

  The dining-room in Serebryakov’s house. Night. The night-watchman can be heard knocking in the garden.

  [SEREBRYAKOV sitting in an armchair in front of an open window and dozing, and YELENA ANDREYEVNAsitting by him, also dozing.]

  SEREBRYAKOV [waking up] : Who’s that? Is that you, Sonya?

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: It’s me.

  SEREBRY AKOV : Lenochka ... The pain’s intolerable!

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA : Your rug’s fallen on the floor. [Wraps his legs.] I’ll shut the window, Aleksandr.

  SEREBRYAKOV : No, it’s stuffy ... I just dropped off and I dreamt my left leg was someone else’s. I woke from excruciating pain. No, it’s not gout, more like rheumatism. What time is it now?

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA : Twenty past midnight.

  [A pause.]

  SEREBRYAKOV : In the morning would you find Batyushkov1 in the library. I think we have him.

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA : What?

  SEREBRYAKOV : Find the Batyushkov in the morning. I remember, we did have him. But why do I find it so hard to breathe?

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA : You’re tired. It’s the second night you haven’t slept.

  SEREBRYAKOV : They say Turgenev2 developed angina from gout. I’m afraid that might happen to me. Cursed and disgusting old age. To hell with it. When I got old, I became repulsive to myself. And all of you must find me repulsive to look at.

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA : When you speak of your age your tone is as if we were all to blame for your being old.

  SEREBRYAKOV : You are the first to find me repulsive.

  [YELENA ANDREYEVNA moves away and sits down at a distance.]

  Of course, you’re right. I’m not stupid and I understand. You are young, healthy, beautiful, you want to live, and I am an old man, almost a corpse. Well? Do you think I don’t understand? And of course it’s absurd that I’m still alive. But wait a little and I’ll soon set all of you free, I won’t hold out much longer.

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: I’m getting exhausted ... For God’s sake, stop.

  SEREBRYAKOV : It turns out that thanks to me, everyone is exhausted and bored and wasting their youth, while I’m the only one to enjoy life and have satisfaction. Of course.

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA : Oh, be quiet! You’ve worn me down!

  SEREBRYAKOV : I’ve worn you all down. Of course.

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA [with tears in her eyes]: It’s intolerable! Tell me, what do you want from me?

  SEREBRYAKOV : Nothing.

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA : Then be quiet. I beg you.

  SEREBRYAKOV : It’s a funny thing, if Ivan Petrovich or that old idiot Mariya Vasilyevna start talking — it’s all right, everyone listens, but if I so much as say one word, then everyone begins to feel unhappy. Even the sound of my voice you find repulsive. Well, I may be repulsive, egotistical, a tyrant, but don’t I even, in my old age, have some right to egotism? Don’t I deserve that? I ask you, do I not have the right to a peaceful old age, to people’s consideration?

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA : No one is disputing your rights.

  [The window bangs in the wind.]

  The wind’s risen, I’ll shut the window. [Shuts it.] It’ll rain now. No one is disputing your rights.

  [A pause; the watchman in the garden knocks and sings a song.]

  SEREBRYAKOV : I work all my life for learning, I’m used to my study, the lecture hall, colleagues I esteem — and then, I end up for no good reason in this tomb, see fools here every day, listen to worthless conversations ... I want to live, I like success, I like fame, making a noise, and here it’s like being in exile. To pine every minute for the past, to watch the success of others, to be afraid of death ... I can’t! I haven’t the strength! And they won’t even excuse me my age here!

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: Wait, be patient: in five or six years’ time I too am going to be old.

  [Enter SONYA.]

  SONYA: Papa, you yourself sent for Dr Astrov, but when he came you refused to see him. It’s bad manners. To put someone to trouble just for nothing ...

  SEREBRYAKOV: What use is your Astrov to me? He knows as much about medicine as I do about astronomy.

  SONYA: We can’t call in the whole faculty of medicine here for your gout.

  SEREBRYAKOV: I won’t even talk to that holy fool.3

  SONYA: As you please. [Sits down.] It’s all the same to me.

  SEREBRYAKOV : What time is it?

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: After midnight.

  SEREBRYAKOV: It’s stuffy ... Sonya, give me the drops on the table!

  SONYA: Here. [Gives him the drops.]

  SEREBRYAKOV [crossly]: No, not these! One can’t ask for anything!

  SONYA: Please don’t be difficult. Maybe some people like it, but kindly spare me! I don’t. And I have no time, tomorrow I have to get up early, it’s haymaking.

  [Enter VOYNITSKY, wearing a dressing-gown and with a candle.]

  VOYNITSKY: There’s a storm brewing outside.

  [Lightning.]

  There! Hélène, Sonya, go to bed, I’ve come to take over from you.

  SEREBRYAKOV [nervously]: No, no! Don’t leave me with him! No. He’ll wear me out with his talk!

  VOYNITSKY: But you must give them some rest. It’s the second night they haven’t slept.

  SEREBRYAKOV: Let them go to bed, but you go off too. I’d be grateful. I beg you. In the name of our former friendship, don’t protest. We’ll talk later.

  VOYNITSKY [with irony]: Our former friendship ... Former ...

  SONYA: Shut up, Uncle Vanya.

  SEREBRYAKOV [to his wife]: My dear, don’t leave me with him! He’ll wear me out.

  VOYNITSKY: It’s even becoming funny.

  [MARINA enters with a candle.]

  SONYA: You should go to bed, Nyanya dear. It’s late.

  MARINA: The samovar hasn’t been cleared from the table. How can I go to bed?

  SEREBRYAKOV: No one can sleep, everyone’s exhausted, I’m the only one who’s happy.

  MARINA [going to Serebryakov, affectionately]: Master, what’s the matter? Does it hurt? My own legs ache and ache. [Adjusts the rug.] It’s your old trouble. Vera Petrovna, your late wife, little Sonya’s mother, used not to sleep at nights, she used to worry ... She loved you very much ...

  [A pause.]

  Old people are like children, they want somebody to be sorry for them, but no one is sorry for the old. [Kisses Serebryakov on the shoulder.4] Master, come to bed ... Come, dear ... I’ll make you some lime tea and warm up your feet ... I’ll say a prayer to God for you ...

  SEREBRYAKOV [touched]: Let’s go, Marina.

  MARINA: My own legs ache and ache! [She and SONYA lead him together.] Vera Petrovna used to get so upset, she used to
cry ... Sonya, you were still a little girl then, didn’t know ... Come, master, come ...

  [Exeunt SEREBRYAKOV, SONYA and MARINA.]

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: I’m worn out by him. I can hardly keep on my feet.

  VOYNITSKY: You’re worn out by him, and I by my own self. It’s the third night I haven’t slept.

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: This house is troubled. Your mother hates everything except her pamphlets and the Professor; the Professor is angry, he doesn’t trust me and is frightened of you; Sonya is cross with her father, is cross with me and hasn’t talked to me now for two weeks; you hate my husband and openly despise your mother; I’m angry and today I’ve started to cry twenty times ... This house is troubled.

  VOYNITSKY: Let’s stop philosophizing!

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: Ivan Petrovich, you are educated and clever and I think you must understand that the world is being destroyed, not by bandits, not by fires, but by hatred, enmity, and all these petty squabbles ... Instead of grumbling you should reconcile everyone.

  VOYNITSKY: First reconcile me with myself! My dearest ... [Stoops to kiss her hand.]

  YELENA ANDREYEVNA: Stop it. [Takes away her hand.] Go to bed!

  VOYNITSKY: The rain will pass now and all nature will be refreshed and give a gentle sigh. I alone will not be refreshed by the storm. Day and night I am weighed down, as if by some devil,5 by the thought that my life is irrevocably gone. I have no past, it has been stupidly squandered on rubbish, and the present is terrible in its absurdity. You have here my life and my love; where am I to put them, what am I to do with them? My feelings are going to waste, like a ray of sunshine falling into a chasm, and I myself am going to waste.