OLGA. Father died just a year ago, on this very day - your birthday, Irina. It was very cold, snow was falling. I felt as though I should not live through it; you lay fainting as though you were dead. But now a year has passed and we can think of it calmly you are already in a white dress, your face is radiant.
(The clock strikes twelve)
The clock was striking then too (a pause). I remember the band playing and the firing at the cemetery as they carried the coffin. He was a general in command of a brigade, and yet there weren't many people there. It was raining, heavy rain and snow...
IRINA. Why recall it?
(Baron, Doctor and Solyony are at the table in the dining room, playing cards)
OLGA. It is warm today, we can have windows open, but the birches are not in leaf. I remember distinctly that in Moscow at this time, at beginning of May, everything was already flower, warm, and everything was bath in sunshine. It's eleven years ago, and yet remember it all as though we had left it yesterday. Oh, dear! I woke up this morning, I saw a blaze of sunshine. I saw the spring, and joy stirred my heart. I had a passionate longing to be back at home again!
DOCTOR. The devil with it.
BARON. Of course, it's nonsense.
(MASHA, brooding over a book, softly whisles a song.)
OLGA. Don't whistle, Masha. How can you! (a pause). Being all day in school and then my lessons till the evening gives me a perpetual headache and thoughts as gloomy as though were old. And really these four years that have been at the school I have felt my strength and my youth oozing away from every day. And only one yearning grows stronger and stronger...
IRINA. To go back to Moscow. To sell the house, to make an end of
everything here, and off to Moscow...
OLGA. Yes! To Moscow, and quickly.
(Doctor and Baron laugh)
IRINA. Andrey will probably be a professor, he will not live here
anyhow. The only problem is poor Masha.
OLGA. Masha will come and spend the whole summer in Moscow every year.
(MASHA softly whistles a tune)
IRINA. Oh, God, please, please. Look, look, how fine it is today. I don't know why I feel so light-hearted! I remembered this morning that it was my birthday and at once I felt joyful and thought of my childhood when mother was living. And I was thrilled by such wonderful thoughts, such thoughts!
OLGA. You are so radiant today and looking lovelier than usual. And Masha is lovely too. Andrey would be nice looking, but he has grown too fat and that does not suit him. And I have grown older and ever so much thinner. I suppose it's because I get so cross with the girls at school. Today now I am free, I am at home, and my head doesn't ache, and I feel younger than yesterday. I am only twenty-eight.... It's all quite right, it's all from God, but it seems to me that if I were married and sitting at home all day, it would be better... I’d have loved my husband.
BARON (to SOLYONY). Come on! You talk such nonsense, I am tired of listening to you. (Coming into the living room) Oh! I forgot to tell you, you will receive a visit today from Vershinin, the new commander of our battery. (Sits down the piano)
IRINA. Is he old?
BARON. No, not really. Forty or forty-five at the most. (Softly plays.) He seems to be a nice fellow. He is not stupid... Only he talks a lot.
IRINA. Is he interesting?
BARON. Yes, he is all right, only he has a wife, a mother-in-law and two little girls. And it's his second wife too. He is telling everyone that he has a wife and two little girls. He'll tell you
so too. His wife seems bit crazy, with her hairdo and always talks in a high-flown style, makes philosophical reflections and frequently attempts to commit suicide, evidently to annoy her husband. I’d have left a woman like that years ego.
SOLYONY. With one hand I can only lift up half a hundredweight, but with both hand I can lift up a hundredweight and a half or even a hundredweight and three-quarters. From that I conclude that two men are not only twice but three times as strong as one man, or even more.
DOCTOR (reading the newspaper). For hair falling out... two ounce of naphthaline in half a bottle of spirit... to be dissolved and used daily... (takes his notebook) Let's make a note of it! No, I don't want it... (scratches it out). It doesn't matter.
IRINA. Doctor, dear old Doctor!
DOCTOR. What is it, my child, my joy?
IRINA. Tell me, why is it I am so happy today? As though I were sailing with the great blue sky above me and big white birds flying over it. Why is it? Why?
DOCTOR (kissing both her hands). My white bird.
IRINA. When I woke up this morning, it suddenly seemed as though everything in the world was clear to me and that I knew how one ought to live. I know all about it! We ought to work, to toil in the sweat of his brow, whoever he may be, and all the purpose and meaning of his life, his happiness, his ecstasies lie in that alone. Oh, dear! To say nothing of human beings, it would be better to be an ox, better to be a humble horse and work, than a young woman who wakes at twelve o'clock, then has coffee.... Oh, how awful! Just as one has a craving for water in hot weather I have a craving for work. And if I don't get up early and work, give me up as a friend.
DOCTOR (tenderly). I'll give you up! I'll give you up...
OLGA. Father trained us to get up at seven o'clock. Now Irina wakes at
seven and lies in bed at least till nine thinking. And she looks so
serious! (Laughs)
IRINA. You are used to thinking of me as a child and are surprised when I look serious. I am twenty!
BARON. Oh my friend, how well I understand it! I have never worked in my life. I was born in cold, idle Petersburg. I used to be troublesome, but my mother looked at me with reverential awe, and was surprised when other people did not do the same. I was guarded from work. But I doubt if they have succeeded in guarding me completely, I doubt it! The time is at hand, an avalanche is moving down upon us, a mighty clearing storm which is coming, is already near and will soon blow the laziness, the indifference, the distaste for work, the rotten boredom out of our society. In another twenty-five or thirty years every one will have to work!
DOCTOR. I am not going to work.
BARON. You don't count.
SOLYONY. In another twenty-five years you won't be here, thank God. In
two or three years you will kick the bucket, or I shall lose my temper
and put a bullet through your head, my angel (pulls a scent-bottle out
of his pocket and sprinkles his chest and hands).
DOCTOR (laughs). And I really have never done anything at all. I
haven't done a stroke of work since I left the university, I have never read a book, I read nothing but newspapers (takes another newspaper out of his pocket). Here I know, for instance, from the newspapers that there was such a person as Dobrolyubov, but what he wrote, I can't say... Goodness only knows... (A knock is heard) There... they are calling me downstairs, I'll be back... (goes out hurriedly, combing his beard).
(MASHA, humming, puts on her hat.)
OLGA. Where are you going?
MASHA. Home.
IRINA. How odd!
BARON. Leaving a birthday party!
MASHA. Never mind.... I'll come in the evening. Good-bye. (Kisses Irina) Once again I wish you, be well. In old days, when father was alive, we always had thirty or forty officers here on birthdays; it was noisy, but today there is only a man and a half, and it is as still as the desert.... I'll go.... I am blue today, glum, so don't listen what I say. (Laughing through tears). We'll talk some other time, and so for now good-bye, I am going.
IRINA (discontentedly). Oh, how strange you are...
OLGA (with tears). I understand you, Masha.
SOLYONY. If a man philosophises, there will be philosophy or sophistry, anyway, but if a woman philosophises, then you may (snap his fingers) -- pull my finger!
MASHA. What do you mean to say by that, you, terrible child?
(Enter DOCTOR with a samovar; laughter)
OLGA (Putting her hands over her face). How awful!
IRINA (to Doctor). My dear, what are you thinking about!
BARON (laughs). I warned you!
DOCTOR. My dear girls, my darlings, you are all that I have, you
are the most precious treasures I have on earth. I shall soon be sixty, I am an old man, alone in the world, a useless old man.... There is nothing good in me, except my love for you, and if it were not for I should have been dead long ago.... (To IRINA) My dear, my little girl... I've carried you in my arms... I loved your dear mother.
IRINA. But why such expensive presents?
DOCTOR. Expensive presents.... Expensive presents...
(Enter VERSHININ.)
BARON. Oh! Colonel Vershinin!
VERSHININ (to MASHA and IRINA). I have the honour to introduce myself, my name is Vershinin. I am very, very glad to be in your house at last. How you have grown up! My, my!
IRINA. Please sit down. We are delighted to see you.
VERSHININ. How glad I am, how glad I am! But there are three of you, the sisters. I remembcr - three little girls. I don't remember
your faces, but that your father had three little girls I remember perfectly, yes, and saw them with my own eyes. How time passes! Hey-ho, how it passes.
BARON. Vershinin has come from Moscow.
IRINA. From Moscow? You have come from Moscow?
VERSHININ. Yes. Your father was in command of a battery there, and I was an officer in the same brigade. (To MASHA). Your face, now, I seem to remember.
MASHA. I don't remember you.
IRINA. Olga! Olya! Olga, come! Colonel Vershinin is from Moscow!
VERSHININ. So you are Olga, the eldest.... And you are Masha... And you are Irina, the youngest.
OLGA. You come from Moscow?
VERSHININ. Yes. I studied in Moscow. I began my service there, I served there for years, and at last I have been given a battery here -- I have come here as you see. I don't remember you exactly, but remember you were three sisters. I remember your father. If I shut my eyes, I can see him as though he were living.
OLGA. I thought I remembered everyone...
IRINA. Oh Vershinin, you have come from Moscow! Moscow!
OLGA. We are going to move there, you know.
IRINA. We are hoping to be there by the autumn. It's our home town, we
were born there.... (both laugh with delight)
MASHA (Eagerly). Now I remember! Do you remember, they used to talk of the "love-sick major"? You were a lieutenant at that time and in love, and for some reason everyone called you "major" to tease you...
VERSHININ (laughs). Yes, yes! The love-sick major, that was it.
MASHA. You had a moustache then. Oh, how much older you look!
(through tears) How much older I...
VERSHININ. Yes, when I was called the love-sick major I was young, I was in love. Now it's very different.
OLGA. But you haven't a single grey hair. You have grown older but you
are not old.
VERSHININ. I am in my forty-third year, though....
IRINA. Why are you crying, Masha, you silly girl? (through her tears) I shall cry too...
VERSHININ. And what a broad, splendid river you have here! A marvellous river!
OLGA. Yes, but it is cold. It's cold here and dark.
VERSHININ. No! You've such a splendid healthy climate here... and birches too. Charming, birches... It's nice to live here. The only strange thing is that the railway station is fifteen miles away and no one knows why it is so.
SOLYONY. I know why it is. (They all look at him.) Because if the station had been near it would not have been so far, and if it is far, it's because it is not near.
(An awkward silence.)
BARON. He likes his own jokes.
OLGA. Now I recall you, too. I remember.
VERSHININ. I knew your mother.
DOCTOR. She was a fine woman, the kingdom of heaven be hers.
IRINA. Mother is buried in Moscow.
MASHA. Would you believe it, I am already beginning to forget her face. So people will not remember us either... they will forget us.
VERSHININ. Yes. They will forget us. Such is our fate. What seems to us serious, significant, very important, will one day be forgotten (a pause). And it's curious that we can't possibly tell what exactly will be considered great and important, and what will seem paltry and ridiculous. Did not the discoveries of Copernicus or Columbus, let us say, seem useless and ridiculous at first, while the nonsensical writings of some wiseacre seemed true? And it may be that our present life, which we accept so readily, will in time seem queer, uncomfortable, not sensible, not clean enough, perhaps even sinful.
BARON. Well, perhaps our age will be called a great one. Now we have no torture-chamber....
SOLYONY (in a high-pitched voice). Chook, chook, chook.... It's bread
and meat to the baron to talk about ideas.
BARON. Listen, I ask you to let me alone... (moves to another seat). It gets boring, you know.
SOLYONY (in a high-pitched voice). Chook, chook, chook...
BARON (to VERSHININ). But the unhappiness which one observes now - there is so much of it - does indicate, however, that society has reached a certain moral level. You said just now, baron, that our age will be called great; but people are small all the same... (gets up). Look how small I am.
(A violin is played behind the scenes)
MASHA. That's Andrey playing, our brother.
IRINA. He is the learned one of the family. We expect him to become a
professor. Father was a military man, but his son has gone in for academia.
MASHA. It was father's wish.
OLGA. We have been teasing him today. He is a little bit in love.
IRINA. With a local girl. She will come in later most likely.
MASHA. Oh, how she dresses! It's not that her clothes are merely ugly or out of fashion, they are simply pitiful. A queer gaudy yellowish skirt with some sort of vulgar fringe and a red blouse. And her cheeks scrubbed till they shine! Andrey is not in love with her, he has some taste anyway, it's simply for fun, he is teasing us, playing the fool. I heard yesterday that she is going to be married to the chairman of our City Council. Andrey, come here, dear, just for a minute!
(Enter ANDREY)
OLGA. This is our brother, Andrey.
VERSHININ. Vershinin.
ANDREY. Prozorov. You are our new battery commander?
OLGA. Imagine, Vershinin comes from Moscow!
ANDREY. Really? Well, then, I congratulate you -- my sisters will let you have no peace.
IRINA. Vershinin, see what a pretty picture frame Andrey has given me today! (shows the frame). Made it himself.
VERSHININ (looking at the frame not knowing what to say). Yes... it is something.
IRINA. And that frame above the piano, he made that too!
(ANDREY moves away.)
OLGA. He is learned, and he plays the violin, and he makes all sorts of things. In fact he is good all round. Andrey, don't go! Come here!
(MASHA and IRINA take him by the arms and, laughing, lead him back.)
ANDREY. Leave me alone, please!
MASHA. Do you remeber? Vershinin used to be called the love-sick major at one time, and was not a bit offended. [laughs] And I should like to call you the love-sick violinist!
IRINA. Or the love-sick professor!
OLGA. He is in love! Andrey is in love!
DOCTOR (puts both arms round ANDREY's waist). "Our hearts for love created!" (laughs).
ANDREY. That's enough, that's enough! I haven't slept all night and this morning I don't feel quite myself, as they say. I read till four o'clock and then went to bed, but it was no use. I thought of one thing and another, and then it gets light so early; the sun simply pours into my room. I want while I am here during the summer to translate a book. [smiles] You know, our father, the kingdom of heaven be his, oppressed us with education. It’s absurd and silly, but it must be confessed I began to get fatter after his death, and I have grown too fat in one year, as though a weight had been taken off my body. Thanks to our father we all know Spanish, French and German, and Irina knows Italian too. But what it cost us! (Leaves)
MASHA. In this town to know three languages is an unnecessary luxury!
Not even a luxury, but an unnecessary encumbrance, like a sixth finger. We know a great deal that is unnecessary.
VERSHININ (laughs). You know a great deal that is unnecessary! I don't think there can be a town so dull and dismal that intelligent and educated people are unnecessary in it. Let us suppose that of the hundred thousand people living in this town, which is, of course, uncultured and behind the times, there are only three of your
sort. It goes without saying that you cannot conquer the mass of
darkness round you; little by little, as you go on living, you will be lost in the crowd. You will have to give in to it. Life will get the better of you, but still you will not disappear without a trace. After you there may appear perhaps six like you, then twelve and so on until such as you form a majority. In two or three hundred years life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful, marvellous. Man needs tuck a life and, though he hasn't it yet, he must have a presentiment of it, expect it, dream of it, prepare for it; for that he must see and know more than his father and grandfather (laughs). And you are complaining of knowing too much?
MASHA (takes off her hat). I'll stay to lunch.
IRINA (with a sigh). All that really ought to be written down...
BARON. You say that after many years life on earth will be beautiful and marvellous. But in order to have any share, however far off, in it now one must be preparing for it, one must be working.
VERSHININ (gets up). Yes... What a lot of flowers you have! And delightful rooms. I envy you! I've been knocking about all my life from one wretched lodging to another, always with two chairs and a sofa. What I have been lacking all my life is just such flowers... (rubs his hands) But there, it's no use thinking about it!
BARON. Yes, we must work. You think the German is getting entimental, but on my honour I am Russian and I can't even speak German. My father belonged to the Orthodox Church...
VERSHININ. I often think, what if one were to begin life over again, knowing what one is about! If one life, which has been already lived, were only a rough sketch so to say, and the second were the fair copy! Then, I fancy, every one of us would try before everything not to repeat himself, anyway he would create a different setting for his life; would have a house like this with plenty of light and masses of flowers..., I have a wife and two little girls, my wife is in delicate health and so on and so on, but if I were to begin life over again I would not marry... No, no!
(Enter KULIGIN)
KULYGIN (goes up to IRINA). Dear sister, allow me to congratulate you and with all my heart to wish you good health and everything else that one can desire for a girl of your age. And to offer you as a gift this little book (gives her a book). The history of our high-school for fifty years, written by myself. An insignificant little book, written because I had nothing better to do, but still you can read it. Good morning, friends. (To VERSHININ) Kuligin, teacher in the high-school here. (kisses MASHA).
IRINA. Why, but you gave me a copy of this book at Easter.
KULYGIN (laughs). Impossible! If that's so, give it me back, or better
still, give it to the Colonel. Please accept it, Colonel. Some day when you are bored you can read it.
VERSHININ. Thank you (is about to leave). I am extremely glad to
have made your acquaintance.
OLGA. You are going? No, no!
IRINA. You must stay to lunch with us. Please do.
OLGA. Please, stay for lunch. Please.
KULYGIN. Today, gentlemen, is Sunday, a day of rest. Let us all rest and enjoy ourselves each in accordance with our age and our position. The carpets should be taken up for the summer and put away till the
winter.... Persian powder or naphthaline.... The Romans were healthy
because they knew how to work and they knew how to rest, they had mens sana in corpore sano. Their life was moulded into a certain framework. Our headmaster says that the most important thing in every life is its framework. What loses its framework, comes to an end-and it's the same in our everyday life. (Puts his arm round MASHA's waist, laughing.) Masha loves me. My wife loves me. And the window curtains, too, ought to be put away together with the carpets. Today I feel cheerful and in the best of spirits. Masha, at four o'clock this afternoon we have to be at the headmaster's. An excursion has been arranged for the teachers and their families.
MASHA. I am not going.
KULYGIN. Masha, dear Masha, why not?
MASHA. We'll talk about it afterwards. (Angrily) Very well, I will go,
only let me alone, please... (walks away).
KULYGIN. And then we shall spend the evening at the headmaster's. In
spite of the delicate state of his health, that man tries before all
things to be sociable. He is an excellent, noble personality. A splendid man. Yesterday, after the meeting, he said to me, "I am tired, Kuligin, I am tired." (Clock stricks twelve. Looks at the clock, then at his watch) Your clock is off. Yes," he said, I am tired."
(Sounds of a violin behind the scenes)
MASHA (angrily, but so as not to be heard by her husband). Again, damn it, I am to be bored a whole evening at the headmaster's!
BARON. I wouldn't go if I were you. It's very simple.
DOCTOR. Don't go, my love.
MASHA. Oh, yes, don't go! It's a damn stupid life... (goes to the table, DOCTOR following her).
SOLYONY (to BARON). Chook, chook, chook...
BARON. Enough, Solyony! Leave off!
SOLYONY. Chook, chook, chook...
KULYGIN. Your health, Colonel! I am Schoolmaster and one of the family here, Masha's husband.... She is very kind really, very kind.
VERSHININ. I'll have some of this dark-coloured vodka . . . (drinks). To your health! (To OLGA) I feel so happy with all of you!
(IRINA and BARON in the living-room)
BARON. What are you thinking about?
IRINA. Nothing. I don't like that Solyony of yours, I am afraid of him. He keeps on saying such stupid things.
BARON. I am sorry for him and annoyed by him, but more sorry. I think he is shy.... When one is alone with him he is very intelligent and friendly, but in company he is rude, a bully. Don't go yet, let me be by you. What are you thinking of? Look, you are twenty, I am not yet thirty. How many years have we got before us, a long, long chain of days full of my love for you...
IRINA. Don't talk to me about love, please.
BARON (not listening). I have a passionate craving for life, for
struggle, for work, and that craving is mingled in me with my love
for you, and just because you are beautiful it seems to me that life too is beautiful! What are you thinking of?
IRINA. You say life is beautiful.... But what if it only seems so! Life for us has not been beautiful yet, we have been stifled by it as plants are choked by weeds... I’m crying. I mustn't do that (hurriedly wipes her eyes and smiles). I must work, I must work. The reason we are depressed and take such a gloomy view of life is that we know nothing of real work....
(Enter ANDREY and NATASHA; she is wearing a pink dress with a green sash.)
NATASHA. They are sitting down to lunch already.... I am late... (Steals a glance at herself in the glass and sets herself to rights) I think my hair is all right. (To IRINA) My dear, I congratulate you! (gives her an effusive kiss). You have a lot of visitors, I really feel shy.... Good day, baron!
OLGA (coming into the drawing-room). Well, here is Natasha! How are you, my dear? (kisses her).
NATASHA. Congratulations! you have such a big party and I feel awfully shy.
OLGA. Nonsense, we have only our own people... (undertone, in alarm) You've got on a green sash. My dear, that's not nice!
NATASHA. Is green unlucky?
OLGA. No, it's only that it doesn't go with your dress and it looks
odd.
NATASHA. Really? But you know it's not green
exactly, it's more a dead color...
(In the dining-room they are all sitting down.)
KULYGIN. I wish you a good husband, Irina. It's time for you to think of getting married.
DOCTOR (to Natasha). I hope we may hear of your engagement soon.
KULYGIN. Natasha has got a suitor already.
MASHA. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to make a speech!
KULYGIN. You deserve three bad marks for conduct.
VERSHININ. How nice this cordial is! What is it made of?
SOLYONY. Of cockroaches.
IRINA (in a tearful voice). Ugh, ugh! How disgusting!
(pause)
DOCTOR (to Andrey and Natasha). "Nature our hearts for love created!" (all laugh).
(NATASHA runs out from the dining-room, followed by ANDREY.)
ANDREY. Come, don't take any notice! Wait a minute... stop, please...
NATASHA. I am so embarrased... I don't know what's the matter with me
and they make fun of me. I can't help it... I can't... (covers her face with her hands).
ANDREY. My dear, I entreat you, I implore you, don't be upset. I
assure you they are only joking. My sweet, they are all kind people and they are fond of me and of you. Come here to the window, here they can't see us... (looks around). Oh youth, lovely, marvellous youth, don't be so distressed! Believe me, believe me... I feel so happy, my soul is full of love and rapture.... Oh, no, they can't see us! Why, why I love you, I loved you, I don't know. My dear, my sweet, pure one, be my wife! I love you, I love you... as I have never loved anyone before...
End of Act I
[ Chekhov-Alaska 1999 * UAF Adaptation ]
theatre theory
@1999-2003 * vTheatre *
