Act I
The garden on Ivanov’s estate. On the left, the front of the house with the verandah. One window is open. In front of the verandah is a wide semicircular space, from which an avenue at right angles to the house, and another to the right, run into the garden. On the right side of the verandah are garden seats and tables. On one of the latter a lamp is burning. Evening is coming on. As the curtain rises there is the sound of a duet of piano and cello being practised indoors.
Ivanov is sitting at a table reading. Borkin, wearing high boots and carrying a gun, comes into sight at the further end of the garden—he is a little drunk; seeing Ivanov, he advances on tiptoe towards him, and when he reaches him aims his gun at his face.
| Ivanov | Seeing Borkin, starts and jumps up. Misha, what are you about? … You gave me a fright. … I am worried as it is, and then you come with your stupid jokes … sits down. He has frightened me, and is delighted … |
| Borkin | Laughs. There, there. … I am sorry, I am sorry sits down beside him. I won’t do it again, I really won’t … takes off his cap. I’m hot. Would you believe it, my dear soul, I’ve done nearly twelve miles in three hours! … Just feel how my heart is beating! … |
| Ivanov | Reading. All right, presently. … |
| Borkin | No, feel now takes Ivanov’s hand and lays it on his chest. Do you hear? Too-too-too-too-too-too. … It shows I’ve got heart-disease, you know. I might die suddenly, any minute. I say, will you be sorry if I die? |
| Ivanov | I am reading … presently. … |
| Borkin | No, seriously, will you be sorry if I die? Nikolay Alexeyevitch, will you be sorry if I die? |
| Ivanov | Don’t pester me! |
| Borkin | My dear fellow, do tell me whether you will be sorry. |
| Ivanov | I am sorry you smell of vodka. Misha, it’s disgusting! |
| Borkin | Laughs. Do I smell of it? How surprising! … Though there is nothing surprising in it, really. At Plesniki I met the examining magistrate, and I must own we put away eight glasses or so each. Drinking is very bad for one, really. I say, it is bad for one, isn’t it? It is, isn’t it? |
| Ivanov | This is really intolerable. … You must see that it’s simply maddening. … |
| Borkin | There, there. … I am sorry, I am sorry. … God bless you; sit still … gets up and walks away. Queer people; there’s no talking to them! Comes back. Oh yes, I was almost forgetting. … Give me the eighty-two roubles. |
| Ivanov | What eighty-two roubles? |
| Borkin | To pay the labourers tomorrow. |
| Ivanov | I haven’t got it. |
| Borkin | Very much obliged! Mimicking. I haven’t got it. … But the labourers must be paid, mustn’t they? |
| Ivanov | I don’t know. I haven’t the money today. Wait till the first of next month, when I get my salary. |
| Borkin | Much good it is talking to such a specimen! … The labourers won’t come for the money on the first; they will come tomorrow morning! … |
| Ivanov | Well, what am I to do? You may cut my throat, hack me to pieces. … And what a revolting habit it is of yours to pester me just when I am reading or writing, or … |
| Borkin | I ask you, must the labourers be paid or not? But what’s the use of talking to you! Waves his hand. And he is a country gentleman—hang it all, a landowner! … Up-to-date agricultural methods. … Three thousand acres, and not a penny in his pocket! … There is a wine-cellar, and no corkscrew. … I’ll go and sell the three horses tomorrow! Yes! I have sold the standing oats, and now I’ll sell the rye! Strides about the stage. Do you suppose I’d hesitate? Eh? No; you’ve hit on the wrong man for that. … |
| Shabelsky’s voice inside: “It is impossible to play with you. … You have no more ear than a stuffed pike, and your touch is appalling!” | |
| Anna Petrovna | Appears at the open window. Who was talking here just now? Was it you, Misha? Why are you striding about like that? |
| Borkin | Your Nicolas-voilà is enough to drive one to anything! |
| Anna Petrovna | I say, Misha, tell them to bring some hay on to the croquet lawn. |
| Borkin | Waving her off. Please let me alone. … |
| Anna Petrovna | Goodness! what a way to speak! … That tone doesn’t suit you at all. If you want women to like you, you must never let them see you cross or standing on your dignity. To her husband. Nikolay, let us roll about on the hay! |
| Ivanov | It’s bad for you to stand at an open window, Anyuta. Please go in … Calls. Uncle, shut the window. The window is shut. |
| Borkin | Don’t forget that in two days’ time you have to pay Lebedyev his interest. |
| Ivanov | I remember. I shall be at Lebedyev’s today, and I will ask him to wait looks at his watch. |
| Borkin | When are you going? |
| Ivanov | Directly. |
| Borkin | Eagerly. Wait a minute! I do believe it is Sasha’s birthday today … tut—tut—tut … and I forgot it. … What a memory! Skips about. I am going—I am going sings. I am going. … I’ll go and have a bathe, chew some paper, take three drops of spirits of ammonia—and I shall be ready to begin all over again. … Nikolay Alexeyevitch darling, my precious, angel of my heart, you are always in a state of nerves, complaining, and in the dismal doldrums, and yet the devil only knows what we two might bring off together! I am ready to do anything for you. … Would you like me to marry Marfusha Babakin for you? Half her dowry shall be yours … no, not half, all, all shall be yours! |
| Ivanov | Do shut up with your silly rot. |
| Borkin | No, seriously! Would you like me to marry Marfusha? We’ll go halves over the dowry. … But there, why do I talk about it to you? As though you would understand! Mimicking. “Shut up with your silly rot.” You are a fine man, an intelligent man, but you’ve none of that streak in you, you know—none of that go … To have a fling to make the devils sick with envy. … You are a neurotic, a drooper, but if you were a normal man you would have a million in a year. For instance, if I had at this moment two thousand three hundred roubles, I would have twenty thousand in a fortnight. You don’t believe it? You call that silly rot too? No, it’s not silly rot. … There, give me two thousand three hundred roubles and in a week I’ll bring you twenty thousand. On the other side of the river Ovsyanov is selling a strip of land just opposite us for two thousand three hundred roubles. If we were to buy that strip, both sides of the river would be ours, and if both banks were ours, you know, we should have the right to dam up the river, shouldn’t we? We’d set about building a mill, and, as soon as we let people know we were going to make a dam, all the people living down the river would make a hullaballoo, and we’d say—kommen sie hier, if you don’t want to have a dam, buy us off. Do you understand? Zarevsky’s factory would give us five thousand, Korolkov three thousand, the monastery five thousand. … |
| Ivanov | That’s all stuff and nonsense, Misha. … If you don’t want to quarrel with me, keep such schemes to yourself. |
| Borkin | Sits down to the table. Of course! … I knew it would be so! … You won’t do anything yourself, and you won’t let me. |
| Enter Shabelsky and Lvov. | |
| Shabelsky | Coming out of the house with Lvov. Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that the lawyers rob you, and the doctors rob you and murder you. … I am not speaking of present company sits down on the garden-seat. Charlatans, exploiters. … Perhaps in Arcadia there may be some exceptions to the general rule, but … In the course of my life I’ve spent twenty thousand or so on doctors, and I never met a single one who did not seem to me a licensed swindler. |
| Borkin | To Ivanov. Yes, you do nothing yourself, and you won’t let me do anything. That’s why we have no money. … |
| Shabelsky | I repeat that I am not speaking of present company. … Perhaps there are exceptions, though indeed … yawns. |
| Ivanov | Shutting his book. What do you say, doctor? |
| Lvov | Looking round towards the window. What I said to you this morning: she must go to the Crimea at once paces about the stage. |
| Shabelsky | Giggles. Crimea! … Why don’t you and I go in for being doctors, Misha? It’s so simple. … As soon as some Madame Angot or Ophelia begins wheezing and coughing because she has nothing better to do, you’ve to take a sheet of paper and prescribe according to the rules of your science: first, a young doctor, then a trip to the Crimea, a Tatar guide in the Crimea. … |
| Ivanov | To Shabelsky. Oh, do stop it! How you do keep on! To Lvov. To go to the Crimea one must have money. Even if I do manage to get it, she absolutely refuses to go. |
| Lvov | Yes, she does a pause. |
| Borkin | I say, doctor, is Anna Petrovna really so ill that it is necessary for her to go to the Crimea? |
| Lvov | Looking round towards the window. Yes, it’s consumption. |
| Borkin | Ss—ss! … That’s bad. … For some time past I’ve thought she looked as though she wouldn’t last long. |
| Lvov | But … don’t talk so loud … you will be heard in the house a pause. |
| Borkin | Sighing. Such is life. … The life of man is like a flower growing luxuriantly in a field: a goat comes and eats it, and the flower is no more. |
| Shabelsky | It’s all nonsense, nonsense, nonsense … yawns. Nonsense and fraud a pause. |
| Borkin | And here, gentlemen, I keep showing Nikolay Alexeyevitch how to make money. I’ve just given him a glorious idea, but as usual he throws cold water on it. There’s no moving him. … Just look at him: melancholy, spleen, depression, hypochondria, dejection. … |
| Shabelsky | Stands up and stretches. You’ve got some scheme for everyone, you genius; you teach everyone how to live, you might try it on me for once. … Give me a lesson, you brainy person, show me a way of escape. … |
| Borkin | Getting up. I’m going to bathe. … Goodbye, gentlemen. To the Count. There are twenty things you could do. … If I were in your place I would have twenty thousand within a week is going. |
| Shabelsky | Follows him. How’s that? Come, show me how to do it. |
| Borkin | It doesn’t need showing. It’s very simple coming back. Nikolay Alexeyevitch, give me a rouble! |
| Ivanov gives him the money in silence. | |
| Borkin | Merci! To the Count. You’ve still lots of trump cards in your hand. |
| Shabelsky | Following him. Well, what are they? |
| Borkin | If I were in your place, within a week I would have thirty thousand, if not more goes out with the Count. |
| Ivanov | After a pause. Superfluous people, superfluous words, the necessity of answering foolish questions—all this has so exhausted me that I am quite ill, doctor. I have grown irritable, hasty, harsh, and so petty that I don’t know myself. For days together my head aches; I cannot sleep, there’s a noise in my ears. … And there’s no getting away from it all … simply nothing I can do. … |
| Lvov | I want to talk to you seriously, Nikolay Alexeyevitch. |
| Ivanov | What is it? |
| Lvov | It’s about Anna Petrovna sits down. She won’t consent to go to the Crimea, but with you she would go. |
| Ivanov | Pondering. To go together we must have the means to do it. Besides, they won’t give me a long leave. I’ve taken my holiday this year already … |
| Lvov | Well, supposing that is so. Now for the next point. The most important condition for the treatment of consumption is absolute peace of mind, and your wife never has a moment’s peace of mind. She is in continual agitation over your attitude to her. Forgive me, I am excited and am going to speak frankly to you. Your conduct is killing her a pause. Nikolay Alexeyevitch, allow me to think better of you! |
| Ivanov | It’s all true, quite true. … I expect I am terribly to blame, but my thoughts are in a tangle, my soul is paralysed by inertia, and I am incapable of understanding myself. I don’t understand others or myself … looks at the window. We may be overheard, let us go for a stroll. They get up. I’d tell you the whole story from the beginning, my dear fellow, but it’s a long story and so complicated that I shouldn’t be finished by tomorrow morning. They are walking away. Anyuta is a remarkable, exceptional woman. … For my sake she has changed her religion, given up her father and mother, abandoned wealth, and if I wanted a hundred more sacrifices she would make them without the quiver of an eyelash. Well, and I am in no way remarkable, and I have made no sacrifices. But it’s a long story. … The point of it all is, dear doctor hesitates, is that … The long and the short of it is that I was passionately in love when I married and vowed I would love her forever; but … five years have passed, she still loves me, and I … makes a gesture of despair. Here you tell me that she is soon going to die, and I feel neither love nor pity, but a sort of emptiness and weariness. … If one looks at me from outside it must be horrible. I don’t myself understand what is happening in my soul. They go out along the avenue. |
| Enter Shabelsky. | |
| Shabelsky | Laughing. Upon my honour, he is no common rascal, he is a genius, an expert! We ought to put up a statue to him. He combines in himself every form of modern rottenness: the lawyer’s and the doctor’s, and the huckster’s and the cashier’s sits down on the lowest step of the verandah. And yet I believe he has never finished his studies! That’s what is so surprising. … What a rascal of genius he would have been if he had absorbed culture and learning! “You can have twenty thousand in a week,” says he. “You’ve still the ace of trumps in your hands,” says he, “your title.” Laughs. “Any girl with a dowry would marry you. …” |
| Anna Petrovna opens the window and looks down. | |
| Shabelsky | “Would you like me to make a match for you with Marfusha?” says he. Qui est-ce que c’est Marfusha? Ah, it’s that Balabalkin … Babakalkin … who looks like a washerwoman. … |
| Anna Petrovna | Is that you, Count? |
| Shabelsky | What is it? |
| Anna Petrovna laughs. | |
| Shabelsky | With a Jewish accent. Vot for you laugh? |
| Anna Petrovna | I thought of something you said. Do you remember what you said at dinner: “A thief that is forgiven, a horse …” What is it? |
| Shabelsky | A Jew that is christened, a thief that isis forgiven, a horse that is doctored—are worth the same price. |
| Anna Petrovna | Laughs. You can’t make even a simple joke without spite in it. You are a spiteful man. Earnestly. Joking apart, Count, you are very spiteful. It’s dull and dreadful living with you. You are always snarling and grumbling. You think all men are scoundrels and rascals. Tell me honestly, have you ever said anything good about anyone? |
| Shabelsky | Why this cross-examination? |
| Anna Petrovna | We’ve been living under the same roof for five years and I’ve never once heard you speak of people calmly, without malice and derision. What harm have people done you? And do you really imagine that you are better than anyone else? |
| Shabelsky | I don’t imagine it at all. I am just as great a blackguard and pig in a skullcap as everyone else, mauvais ton and an old rag. I always abuse myself. Who am I? What am I? I was rich, free and rather happy, but now … I am a dependant, a hanger-on, a degraded buffoon. I am indignant, I am contemptuous, and people laugh at me: I laugh and they shake their heads at me mournfully and say the old chap is cracked … and most often they don’t hear me, don’t heed me. … |
| Anna Petrovna | Calmly. It is screeching again. |
| Shabelsky | Who is screeching? |
| Anna Petrovna | The owl. It screeches every evening. |
| Shabelsky | Let it screech. Nothing can be worse than what is now stretching. Ah, my dear Sarra, if I were to win a hundred or two hundred thousand I’d show you a thing or two! You’d see no more of me here. I’d get away from this hole, away from the bread of charity … and wouldn’t set foot here again till the day of judgment. … |
| Anna Petrovna | And what would you do if you did win a lot of money? |
| Shabelsky | After a moment’s thought. First of all I would go to Moscow to hear the gypsies. Then … then I should be off to Paris. I should take a flat there, I should go to the Russian church. … |
| Anna Petrovna | And what else? |
| Shabelsky | I should sit for days together on my wife’s grave and think. I should sit there till I died. My wife is buried in Paris. … a pause. |
| Anna Petrovna | How awfully dull it is! Shall we play another duet? |
| Shabelsky | Very well, get the music ready. |
| Anna Petrovna goes out. Enter Ivanov and Lvov. | |
| Ivanov | Comes into sight with Lvov in the avenue. You took your degree only last year, my dear friend, you are still young and vigorous while I am five and thirty. I have the right to advise you. Don’t marry a Jewess nor a neurotic nor a blue stocking, but choose what is commonplace, grey, with no vivid colours or superfluous flourishes. In fact, build your whole life on the conventional pattern. The greyer and the more monotonous the background the better, my dear boy. Don’t fight with thousands single-handed, don’t wage war on windmills, don’t batter your head against the wall. … God preserve you from all sorts of scientific farming, wonderful schools, enthusiastic speeches. … Shut yourself up in your shell, do the humble duty God has laid upon you. … That’s snugger, happier and more honest. But the life that I have led, how tiring it is! Ah, how tiring! … How many mistakes, how much that was unjust and absurd. … Seeing the Count, irritably. You are always in the way, Uncle, you never let one have a talk in peace! |
| Shabelsky | In a tearful voice. Oh, the devil take me, there’s no refuge for me anywhere! Jumps up and goes into the house. |
| Ivanov | Calls after him. Oh, I am sorry! To Lvov. What made me hurt his feelings? Yes, I must be out of gear. I must do something with myself, I really must. … |
| Lvov | In agitation. Nikolay Alexeyevitch, I have listened to you and … and forgive me, I will speak plainly, without beating about the bush. Your voice, your intonation, to say nothing of your words, are full of such soulless egoism, such cold heartlessness. … Someone very near to you is dying through her love for you, her days are numbered, and you … you can be cold to her, can walk about and give advice, and pose. … I cannot tell you, I have no gift for words, but … but you are intensely repulsive to me! |
| Ivanov | Very likely, very likely. … You can see it all more clearly from outside. … It’s very possible that you understand. … I daresay I am horribly to blame, horribly … listens. I fancy I hear the carriage. I am going to get ready … goes to the house and stops. You dislike me, doctor, and don’t conceal your dislike. It does credit to your heart … goes into the house. |
| Lvov | Alone. My cursed weakness! Again I’ve missed the chance and haven’t said what I ought to have said. … I cannot speak to him calmly! As soon as I open my mouth and say a word I feel such a suffocation, such a heaving here points to his chest, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. I hate this Tartuffe, this highflown scoundrel, I hate him. … Here he is going away. … His poor wife’s only happiness is to have him near her, she lives in him, she implores him to spend one evening with her, and he … he cannot! He feels stifled and cramped at home, if you please. If he were to spend a single evening at home, he’d be so depressed that he’d blow his brains out. Poor fellow … he must have freedom to contrive some new villainy. … Oh, I know why you go to these Lebedyevs every evening! I know! |
| Enter Ivanov in his hat and overcoat, Anna Petrovna and Shabelsky. | |
| Shabelsky | As he comes out of the house with Anna Petrovna and Ivanov. Really, Nicolas, this is positively inhuman! You go out every evening and we are left alone. We are so bored we go to bed at eight o’clock. It’s hideous, it’s not life at all! And why is it that you can go and we mayn’t? Why? |
| Anna Petrovna | Leave him alone! Let him go, let him. … |
| Ivanov | To his wife. How can you go when you are ill? You are ill and you mustn’t be out after sunset. … Ask the doctor. You are not a child, Anyuta, you must be sensible. … To the Count. And what do you want to go there for? |
| Shabelsky | I’d go to hell, into the jaws of a crocodile, so long as I need not stay here! I am bored! I am bored to stupefaction! Everybody is sick of me. You leave me at home so that she should not be bored alone, but I do nothing but snap and nag at her! |
| Anna Petrovna | Leave him alone, Count, leave him alone! Let him go if he enjoys it. |
| Ivanov | Anyuta, why do you speak like that? You know I am not going for pleasure! I have to speak about the loan. |
| Anna Petrovna | I don’t know why you justify yourself! Go! No one is keeping you! |
| Ivanov | Come, don’t let us nag at each other! Surely it isn’t necessary? |
| Shabelsky | In a tearful voice. Nicolas, dear boy, I implore you, take me with you! I shall have a look at the knaves and fools there and perhaps it will amuse me! I haven’t been anywhere since Easter! |
| Ivanov | Irritably. Oh, very well, come along! How sick I am of you all! |
| Shabelsky | Yes? Oh, merci, merci … cheerfully takes him by the arm and leads him aside. May I wear your straw hat? |
| Ivanov | Yes, only make haste! |
| The Count runs indoors. | |
| Ivanov | How sick I am of you all! But, good God, what am I saying? Anyuta, I talk to you in an unpardonable way. I never used to be like this before. Well, goodbye, Anyuta, I shall be back by one. |
| Anna Petrovna | Kolya, darling, stay at home! |
| Ivanov | Agitated. My precious, my poor unhappy darling, I entreat you, don’t prevent my going out in the evening. It’s cruel and unfair of me, but let me be unfair! I feel miserably depressed at home! As soon as the sun sets, I am overcome by acute misery. Such misery! Don’t ask why it is. I don’t know myself. I swear I don’t! Here it is misery; I go to the Lebedyevs and there it is worse still; I come back and here misery again, and it goes on like that all night. … It’s simply desperate! |
| Anna Petrovna | Kolya … but if you stay? We will talk as we used to. … We’ll have supper together; we will read. … The old grumbler and I have learned a lot of duets for you … puts her arms round him. Do stay! A pause. I don’t understand you. This has been going on for a whole year. Why have you changed? |
| Ivanov | I don’t know, I don’t know. … |
| Anna Petrovna | And why don’t you want me to go with you in the evening? |
| Ivanov | If you will have it, I’ll tell you. It’s rather cruel to say it, but it is better to speak out. … When I am depressed I … I begin not to love you. I run away even from you at such times. In short, I must get away from home. |
| Anna Petrovna | Depression! I understand—I understand. … Do you know what, Kolya? Try to sing, to laugh, to get cross, as you used to. … Stay, we will laugh, drink homemade wine, and we’ll drive away your depression in an instant. Shall I sing to you? Or we’ll go and sit in your study in the dark as we used to, and you shall tell me about your depression. … Your eyes are so full of suffering! I will look into them and weep, and we shall both feel better … she laughs and cries. Or, Kolya, what is it? The flowers come again every spring, but joys do not? Yes? Well, go, go. … |
| Ivanov | Pray for me, Anyuta! He moves forward, stops, and ponders. No, I cannot goes out. |
| Anna Petrovna | Go … sits down at the table. |
| Lvov | Pacing up and down the stage. Anna Petrovna, you must make it a rule as soon as the clock strikes six to come indoors and stay there till morning. The damp of the evening is bad for you. |
| Anna Petrovna | Yes, sir! |
| Lvov | What do you mean by that? I am speaking seriously. |
| Anna Petrovna | And I don’t want to be serious coughs. |
| Lvov | There, you see, you are coughing already. |
| Enter Shabelsky. | |
| Shabelsky | Comes out in a hat and overcoat. Where is Nikolay? Is the carriage there? Goes up quickly and kisses Anna Petrovna’s hand. Good night, my charmer! Grimacing. Gewalt! Vill you pardon me? Goes out quickly. |
| Lvov | The buffoon! |
| A pause; the sound of a concertina far away. | |
| Anna Petrovna | How dull it is! The coachmen and the cooks have got up a ball, while I … I seem to be forsaken. … Yevgeny Konstantinitch, why are you striding up and down? Come here, sit down! |
| Lvov | I can’t sit still a pause. |
| Anna Petrovna |
They are playing the “Greenfinch” in the kitchen.
A pause. Doctor, have you got a father and mother? |
| Lvov | My father is dead, but I have a mother. |
| Anna Petrovna | Do you miss your mother? |
| Lvov | I have no time to miss her. |
| Anna Petrovna | Laughs. The flowers come again every spring, but joys do not. Who was it said that to me? Let me see. … I believe it was Nikolay himself listens. There’s the owl screeching again! |
| Lvov | Well, let it screech. |
| Anna Petrovna | I begin to think, doctor, that fate has been unfair to me. Numbers of people who are perhaps no better than I are happy and pay nothing for their happiness. I have paid for everything, absolutely everything! And what a price! Why take from me such terribly high interest? … My good friend, you are all on your guard with me—you are so considerate, you are afraid to tell me the truth; but do you suppose I don’t know what’s the matter with me? I know very well. But it’s boring to talk about it. In a Jewish accent. Vill you pardon me, please? Can you tell funny stories? |
| Lvov | No. |
| Anna Petrovna | Nikolay can. And I begin to be surprised at people’s injustice. Why don’t they return love for love, and why do they repay truth with falsehood? Tell me, how long will my father and mother hate me? They live forty miles from here, but day and night, even in my sleep, I feel their hatred. And what would you have me make of Nikolay’s depression? He says that he doesn’t love me only in the evenings, when he is overwhelmed with depression. That I understand and can allow for. But only imagine if he should tire of me altogether! Of course it’s impossible, but—if he did? No, no, I must not even think about it. Sings. Greenfinch, greenfinch, where have you been? … starts. What dreadful ideas come into my mind! You are not married, doctor, and there are many things you can’t understand. … |
| Lvov | You are surprised … sits down beside her. No, I … I am surprised—I am surprised at you! Come, explain, make me understand, how is it that you, intelligent, honest, almost a saint, have allowed yourself to be so shamelessly deceived and dragged into this owl’s nest? Why are you here? What have you in common with this cold, soulless … but let us leave your husband out! What have you in common with these vulgar, empty surroundings? Oh, good heavens! … that everlastingly grumbling, rusty, mad Count, that knave Misha—a scoundrel if ever there was one—with his revolting countenance. … Explain to me what you are here for. How did you come here? |
| Anna Petrovna | Laughs. That’s just how he used once to talk. Word for word. … But his eyes are larger, and when he began talking of anything with excitement they glowed like coals. … Go on, go on! |
| Lvov | Gets up with a wave of his hand. What am I to say? Go indoors! |
| Anna Petrovna | You say that Nikolay is this and that, one thing and another. How do you know him? Do you suppose that you can get to know a man in six months? He is a remarkable man, doctor, and I am sorry that you did not meet him two or three years ago. Now he is depressed and melancholy, he doesn’t talk or do anything; but in the old days … how charming he was! I loved him at first sight laughs. I looked and the mousetrap went bang! He said “Come” … I cut off everything as, you know, one cuts off dead leaves with scissors, and followed him a pause. But now it is different. Now he goes to the Lebedyevs to distract his mind with other women, while I … sit in the garden and listen to the owl screeching … A watchman’s tap. And have you any brothers, doctor? |
| Lvov | No. |
| Anna Petrovna breaks into sobs. | |
| Lvov | Well, what now? What’s the matter? |
| Anna Petrovna | Gets up. I can’t bear it, doctor … I am going. … |
| Lvov | Where he is … I am going. Tell them to put the horses in runs into the house. |
| Lvov | No, I must absolutely decline to treat a patient under such conditions! It’s not enough that they don’t pay me a farthing, but they turn my soul inside out as well! … No, I decline! It’s too much … goes into the house. |
Curtain.