Act III
The dining-room in Sorin’s house. Doors on right and on left. A sideboard. A medicine cupboard. A table in the middle of the room. A portmanteau and hatboxes; signs of preparation for departure. Trigorin is having lunch; Masha stands by the table.
| Masha | I tell all this to you as a writer. You may make use of it. I am telling you the truth: if he had hurt himself seriously I would not have gone on living another minute. But I have pluck enough all the same. I just made up my mind that I would tear this love out of my heart, tear it out by the roots. |
| Trigorin | How are you going to do that? |
| Masha | I am going to be married. To Medvedenko. |
| Trigorin | That’s the schoolmaster? |
| Masha | Yes. |
| Trigorin | I don’t understand what’s the object of it. |
| Masha | To love without hope, to spend whole years waiting for something. … But when I marry, there will be no time left for love, new cares will smother all the old feelings. And, anyway, it will be a change, you know. Shall we have another? |
| Trigorin | Won’t that be too much? |
| Masha | Oh, come! Fills two glasses. Don’t look at me like that! Women drink much oftener than you imagine. Only a small proportion drink openly as I do, the majority drink in secret. Yes. And it’s always vodka or brandy. Clinks glasses. My best wishes! You are a good-hearted man; I am sorry to be parting from you. They drink. |
| Trigorin | I don’t want to go myself. |
| Masha | You should beg her to stay. |
| Trigorin | No, she won’t stay now. Her son is behaving very tactlessly. First he shoots himself, and now they say he is going to challenge me to a duel. And whatever for? He sulks, and snorts, and preaches new forms of art. … But there is room for all—new and old—why quarrel about it? |
| Masha | Well, there’s jealousy too. But it is nothing to do with me. |
| A pause. Yakov crosses from right to left with a portmanteau. Nina enters and stands by the window. | |
| Masha | My schoolmaster is not very brilliant, but he is a good-natured man, and poor, and he is very much in love with me. I am sorry for him. And I am sorry for his old mother. Well, let me wish you all happiness. Don’t remember evil against me shakes hands with him warmly. I am very grateful for your friendly interest. Send me your books and be sure to put in an inscription. Only don’t write, “To my honoured friend,” but write simply, “To Marya who belongs nowhere and has no object in life.” Goodbye! Goes out. |
| Nina | Stretching out her arm towards Trigorin, with her fist clenched. Odd or even? |
| Trigorin | Even. |
| Nina | With a sigh. Wrong. I had only one pea in my hand. I was trying my fortune whether to go on the stage or not. I wish someone would advise me. |
| Trigorin | It’s impossible to advise in such a matter a pause. |
| Nina | We are parting and … perhaps we shall never meet again. Won’t you please take this little medallion as a parting gift? I had your initials engraved on one side of it … and on the other the title of your book, Days and Nights. |
| Trigorin | How exquisite! Kisses the medallion. A charming present! |
| Nina | Think of me sometimes. |
| Trigorin | I shall think of you. I shall think of you as you were on that sunny day—do you remember?—a week ago, when you were wearing a light dress … we were talking … there was a white seagull lying on the seat. |
| Nina | Pensively. Yes, a seagull … a pause. We can’t talk any more, there’s someone coming. … Let me have two minutes before you go, I entreat you … goes out on the left. |
| At the same instant Madame Arkadin, Sorin in a dress coat with a star of some order on it, then Yakov, occupied with the luggage, enter on the right. | |
| Madame Arkadin | Stay at home, old man. With your rheumatism you ought not to go gadding about. To Trigorin. Who was that went out? Nina? |
| Trigorin | Yes. |
| Madame Arkadin | Pardon, we interrupted you sits down. I believe I have packed everything. I am worn out. |
| Trigorin | Reads on the medallion. “Days and Nights, page 121, lines 11 and 12.” |
| Yakov | Clearing the table. Am I to pack your fishing things too, sir? |
| Trigorin | Yes, I shall want them again. You can give away the hooks. |
| Yakov | Yes, sir. |
| Trigorin | To himself. Page 121, lines 11 and 12. What is there in those lines? To Madame Arkadin. Are there copies of my books in the house? |
| Madame Arkadin | Yes, in my brother’s study, in the corner bookcase. |
| Trigorin | Page 121 … goes out. |
| Madame Arkadin | Really, Petrusha, you had better stay at home. |
| Sorin | You are going away; it will be dreary for me at home without you. |
| Madame Arkadin | And what is there in the town? |
| Sorin | Nothing particular, but still … laughs. There will be the laying of the foundation-stone of the Zemstvo hall, and all that sort of thing. One longs to shake oneself free from this stagnant existence, if only for an hour or two. I’ve been too long on the shelf like some old cigarette-holder. I have ordered the horses for one o’clock; we’ll set off at the same time. |
| Madame Arkadin | After a pause. Come, stay here, don’t be bored and don’t catch cold. Look after my son. Take care of him. Give him good advice a pause. Here I am going away and I shall never know why Konstantin tried to shoot himself. I fancy jealousy was the chief cause, and the sooner I get Trigorin away from here, the better. |
| Sorin | What can I say? There were other reasons too. It’s easy to understand; he is young, intelligent, living in the country, in the wilds, with no money, no position and no future. He has nothing to do. He is ashamed of his idleness and afraid of it. I am very fond of him indeed, and he is attached to me, yet in spite of it all he feels he is superfluous in the house, that he is a dependant, a poor relation. It’s easy to understand, it’s amour propre. … |
| Madame Arkadin | He is a great anxiety to me! Pondering. He might go into the service, perhaps. |
| Sorin | Begins to whistle, then irresolutely. I think that quite the best thing would be if you were to … let him have a little money. In the first place he ought to be able to be dressed like other people and all that. Just look at him, he’s been going about in the same wretched jacket for the last three years and he has no overcoat … laughs. It would do him no harm to have a little fun … to go abroad or something. … It wouldn’t cost much. |
| Madame Arkadin | But all the same … I might manage the suit, perhaps, but as for going abroad … No, just at the moment I can’t even manage the suit. Resolutely. I have no money! |
| Sorin laughs. | |
| Madame Arkadin | No! |
| Sorin | Begins to whistle. Quite so. Forgive me, my dear, don’t be cross. I believe you. … You are a generous, noble-hearted woman. |
| Madame Arkadin | Weeping. I have no money. |
| Sorin | If I had money, of course I would give him some myself, but I have nothing, not a halfpenny laughs. My steward takes all my pension and spends it all on the land and the cattle and the bees, and my money is all wasted. The bees die, and the cows die, they never let me have horses. … |
| Madame Arkadin | Yes, I have money, but you see I am an actress; my dresses alone are enough to ruin me. |
| Sorin | You are a kind, good creature … I respect you. … Yes … but there, I got a touch of it again … staggers. I feel dizzy clutches at the table. I feel ill and all that. |
| Madame Arkadin | Alarmed. Petrusha! Trying to support him. Petrusha, my dear! Calling. Help! help! |
| Enter Treplev with a bandage round his head and Medvedenko. | |
| Madame Arkadin | He feels faint! |
| Sorin | It’s all right, it’s all right! Smiles and drinks some water. It’s passed off … and all that. |
| Treplev | To his mother. Don’t be frightened, mother, it’s not serious. Uncle often has these attacks now. To his uncle. You must lie down, uncle. |
| Sorin | For a little while, yes. … But I am going to the town all the same. … I’ll lie down a little and then set off. … It’s quite natural goes out leaning on his stick. |
| Medvedenko | Gives him his arm. There’s a riddle: in the morning on four legs, at noon on two, in the evening on three. … |
| Sorin | Laughs. Just so. And at night on the back. Thank you, I can manage alone. … |
| Medvedenko | Oh come, why stand on ceremony! Goes out with Sorin. |
| Madame Arkadin | How he frightened me! |
| Treplev | It is not good for him to live in the country. He gets depressed. If you would be generous for once, mother, and lend him fifteen hundred or two thousand roubles, he could spend a whole year in town. |
| Madame Arkadin | I have no money. I am an actress, not a banker a pause. |
| Treplev | Mother, change my bandage. You do it so well. |
| Madame Arkadin | Takes out of the medicine cupboard some iodoform and a box with bandaging material. The doctor is late. |
| Treplev | He promised to be here at ten, and it is midday already. |
| Madame Arkadin | Sit down takes the bandage off his head. It’s like a turban. Yesterday a stranger asked in the kitchen what nationality you were. But you have almost completely healed. There is the merest trifle left kisses him on the head. You won’t do anything naughty again while I am away, will you? |
| Treplev | No, mother. It was a moment of mad despair when I could not control myself. It won’t happen again. Kisses her hand. You have such clever hands. I remember, long ago, when you were still acting at the Imperial Theatre—I was little then—there was a fight in our yard and a washerwoman, one of the tenants, was badly beaten. Do you remember? She was picked up senseless … you looked after her, took her remedies and washed her children in a tub. Don’t you remember? |
| Madame Arkadin | No puts on a fresh bandage. |
| Treplev | Two ballet dancers lived in the same house as we did at the time. … They used to come to you and have coffee. … |
| Madame Arkadin | I remember that. |
| Treplev | They were very pious a pause. Just lately, these last days, I have loved you as tenderly and completely as when I was a child. I have no one left now but you. Only why, why do you give yourself up to the influence of that man? |
| Madame Arkadin | You don’t understand him, Konstantin. He is a very noble character. … |
| Treplev | And yet when he was told I was going to challenge him, the nobility of his character did not prevent him from funking it. He is going away. Ignominious flight! |
| Madame Arkadin | What nonsense! It is I who am asking him to go. |
| Treplev | A very noble character! Here you and I are almost quarrelling over him, and at this very moment he is somewhere in the drawing-room or the garden laughing at us … developing Nina, trying to convince her finally that he is a genius. |
| Madame Arkadin | You take a pleasure in saying unpleasant things to me. I respect that man and beg you not to speak ill of him before me. |
| Treplev | And I don’t respect him. You want me to think him a genius too, but forgive me, I can’t tell lies, his books make me sick. |
| Madame Arkadin | That’s envy. There’s nothing left for people who have pretension without talent but to attack real talent. Much comfort in that, I must say! |
| Treplev | Ironically. Real talent! Wrathfully. I have more talent them all of you put together if it comes to that! Tears the bandage off his head. You, with your hackneyed conventions, have usurped the supremacy in art and consider nothing real and legitimate but what you do yourselves; everything else you stifle and suppress. I don’t believe in you! I don’t believe in you or in him! |
| Madame Arkadin | Decadent! |
| Treplev | Get away to your charming theatre and act there in your paltry, stupid plays! |
| Madame Arkadin | I have never acted in such plays. Let me alone! You are not capable of writing even a wretched burlesque! You are nothing but a Kiev shopman! living on other people! |
| Treplev | You miser! |
| Madame Arkadin | You ragged beggar! |
| Treplev sits down and weeps quietly. | |
| Madame Arkadin | Nonentity! Walking up and down in agitation. Don’t cry. You mustn’t cry weeps. Don’t … kisses him on the forehead, on the cheeks and on the head. My dear child, forgive me. … Forgive your sinful mother. Forgive me, you know I am wretched. |
| Treplev | Puts his arms round her. If only you knew! I have lost everything! She does not love me, and now I cannot write … all my hopes are gone. … |
| Madame Arkadin | Don’t despair … Everything will come right. He is going away directly, she will love you again wipes away his tears. Give over. We have made it up now. |
| Treplev | Kisses her hands. Yes, mother. |
| Madame Arkadin | Tenderly. Make it up with him too. You don’t want a duel, do you? |
| Treplev | Very well. Only, mother, do allow me not to meet him. It’s painful to me—it’s more than I can bear. Enter Trigorin. Here he is … I am going … rapidly puts away the dressings in the cupboard. The doctor will do the bandaging now. |
| Trigorin | Looking in a book. Page 121 … lines 11 and 12. Here it is. Reads. “If ever my life can be of use to you, come and take it.” |
| Treplev picks up the bandage from the floor and goes out. | |
| Madame Arkadin | Looking at her watch. The horses will soon be here. |
| Trigorin | To himself. “If ever my life can be of use to you, come and take it.” |
| Madame Arkadin | I hope all your things are packed? |
| Trigorin | Impatiently. Yes, yes. Musing. Why is it that I feel so much sorrow in that appeal from a pure soul and that it wrings my heart so painfully? “If ever my life can be of use to you, come and take it.” To Madame Arkadin. Let us stay one day longer. |
| Madame Arkadin shakes her head. | |
| Trigorin | Let us stay! |
| Madame Arkadin | Darling, I know what keeps you here. But have control over yourself. You are a little intoxicated, try to be sober. |
| Trigorin | You be sober too, be sensible and reasonable, I implore you; look at it all as a true friend should. Presses her hand. You are capable of sacrifice. Be a friend to me, let me be free! |
| Madame Arkadin | In violent agitation. Are you so enthralled? |
| Trigorin | I am drawn to her! Perhaps it is just what I need. |
| Madame Arkadin | The love of a provincial girl? Oh, how little you know yourself! |
| Trigorin | Sometimes people sleep as they walk—that’s how it is with me, I am talking to you and yet I am asleep and dreaming of her. … I am possessed by sweet, marvellous dreams. … Let me be free. … |
| Madame Arkadin | Trembling. No, no! I am an ordinary woman, you can’t talk like that to me. Don’t torture me, Boris. It terrifies me. |
| Trigorin | If you cared to, you could be not ordinary. Love—youthful, charming, poetical, lifting one into a world of dreams—that’s the only thing in life that can give happiness! I have never yet known a love like that. … In my youth I never had time, I was always hanging about the editors’ offices, struggling with want. Now it is here, that love, it has come, it beckons to me. What sense is there in running away from it? |
| Madame Arkadin | Wrathfully. You have gone mad! |
| Trigorin | Well, let me? |
| Madame Arkadin | You are all in a conspiracy together to torment me today! Weeps. |
| Trigorin | Clutching at his heart. She does not understand! She won’t understand! |
| Madame Arkadin | Am I so old and ugly that you don’t mind talking of other women to me? Puts her arms round him and kisses him. Oh, you are mad! My wonderful, splendid darling. … You are the last page of my life! Falls on her knees. My joy, my pride, my bliss! … embraces his knees. If you forsake me even for one hour I shall not survive it, I shall go mad, my marvellous, magnificent one, my master. … |
| Trigorin | Someone may come in helps her to get up. |
| Madame Arkadin | Let them, I am not ashamed of my love for you kisses his hands. My treasure, you desperate boy, you want to be mad, but I won’t have it, I won’t let you … laughs. You are mine … mine. … This forehead is mine, and these eyes, and this lovely silky hair is mine too … you are mine all over. You are so gifted, so clever, the best of all modern writers, you are the one hope of Russia. … You have so much truthfulness, simplicity, freshness, healthy humour. … In one touch you can give all the essential characteristics of a person or a landscape, your characters are living. One can’t read you without delight! You think this is exaggerated? That I am flattering you? But look into my eyes … look. … Do I look like a liar? You see, I am the only one who can appreciate you; I am the only one who tells you the truth, my precious, wonderful darling. … Are you coming? Yes? You won’t abandon me? … |
| Trigorin | I have no will of my own … I have never had a will of my own. … Flabby, feeble, always submissive—how can a woman care for such a man? Take me, carry me off, but don’t let me move a step away from you. … |
| Madame Arkadin | To herself. Now he is mine! In an easy tone as though nothing had happened. But, of course, if you like, you can stay. I’ll go by myself and you can come afterwards, a week later. After all, why should you be in a hurry? |
| Trigorin | No, we may as well go together. |
| Madame Arkadin | As you please. Let us go together then a pause. |
| Trigorin makes a note. | |
| Madame Arkadin | What are you writing? |
| Trigorin | I heard a good name this morning, “The Maiden’s Forest.” It may be of use stretches. So we are to go then? Again there will be railway carriages, station, refreshment bars, mutton chops, conversations. … |
| Shamraev | Enters. I have the honour to announce, with regret, that the horses are ready. It’s time, honoured lady, to set off for the station; the train comes in at five minutes past two. So please do me a favour, Irina Nikolaevna, do not forget to inquire what has become of the actor Suzdaltsev. Is he alive and well? We used to drink together at one time. … In The Plundered Mail he used to play incomparably … I remember the tragedian Izmailov, also a remarkable personality, acted with him in Elisavetograd. … Don’t be in a hurry, honoured lady, you need not start for five minutes. Once they were acting conspirators in a melodrama and when they were suddenly discovered Izmailov had to say, “We are caught in a trap,” but he said, “We are caught in a tap!” Laughs. A tap! |
| While he is speaking Yakov is busy looking after the luggage. The maid brings Madame Arkadin her hat, her coat, her umbrella and her gloves; they all help Madame Arkadin to put on her things. The man-cook looks in at the door on left and after some hesitation comes in. Enter Polina Andreyevna, then Sorin and Medvedenko. | |
| Polina | With a basket. Here are some plums for the journey. … Very sweet ones. You may be glad to have something nice. … |
| Madame Arkadin | You are very kind, Polina Andreyevna. |
| Polina | Goodbye, my dear! If anything has not been to your liking, forgive it weeps. |
| Madame Arkadin | Embraces her. Everything has been nice, everything! But you mustn’t cry. |
| Polina | The time flies so fast! |
| Madame Arkadin | There’s no help for it. |
| Sorin | In a greatcoat with a cape to it, with his hat on and a stick in his hand, enters from door on left, crossing the stage. Sister, it’s time to start, or you may be too late after all. I am going to get into the carriage goes out. |
| Medvedenko | And I shall walk to the station … to see you off. I’ll be there in no time … goes out. |
| Madame Arkadin | Goodbye, dear friends. … If we are all alive and well, we shall meet again next summer. The maid, the cook and Yakov kiss her hand. Don’t forget me. Gives the cook a rouble. Here’s a rouble for the three of you. |
| The Cook | We humbly thank you, madam! Good journey to you! We are very grateful for your kindness! |
| Yakov | May God give you good luck! |
| Shamraev | You might rejoice our hearts with a letter! Goodbye, Boris Alexeyevitch! |
| Madame Arkadin | Where is Konstantin? Tell him that I am starting; I must say goodbye. Well, don’t remember evil against me. To Yakov. I gave the cook a rouble. It’s for the three of you. |
| All go out on right. The stage is empty. Behind the scenes the noise that is usual when people are being seen off. The maid comes back to fetch the basket of plums from the table and goes out again. | |
| Trigorin | Coming back. I have forgotten my stick. I believe it is out there, on the verandah goes and, at door on left, meets Nina who is coming in. Is that you? We are going. … |
| Nina | I felt that we should see each other once more. Excitedly. Boris Alexeyevitch, I have come to a decision, the die is cast, I am going on the stage. I shall be gone from here tomorrow; I am leaving my father, I am abandoning everything, I am beginning a new life. Like you, I am going … to Moscow. We shall meet there. |
| Trigorin | Looking round. Stay at the Slavyansky Bazaar … Let me know at once … Molchanovka, Groholsky House. … I am in a hurry … a pause. |
| Nina | One minute more. … |
| Trigorin | In an undertone. You are so lovely. … Oh, what happiness to think that we shall see each other soon! She sinks on his breast. I shall see again those wonderful eyes, that inexpressibly beautiful tender smile … those soft features, the expression of angelic purity. … My darling … a prolonged kiss. |
| Curtain. | |
| Between the Third and Fourth Acts there is an interval of two years. |