IRINA [sits down in an arm-chair]. I must rest. I'm tired.
TUZENBAKH [with a smile]. When you come from the office you seem so young, so forlorn . . . [a pause].
IRINA. I'm tired. No, I don't like telegraph work, I don't like it.
MASHA. You've grown thinner . . . [whistles]. And you look younger, rather like a boy in the face.
TUZENBAKH. That's the way she does her hair.
IRINA. I must find some other job, this does not suit me. What I so longed for, what I dreamed of is the very thing that it's lacking in, . . . It is work without poetry, without meaning. . . . [a knock on the floor]. There's the doctor knocking. . . . [To TUZENBAKH] Knock back, dear. . . . I can't. . . . I am tired.
[TUZENBAKH knocks on the floor.]
IRINA. He will come directly. We ought to do something about it. The doctor and our Andrey were at the Club yesterday and they lost again. I am told Andrey lost two hundred roubles.
MASHA. [indifferently]. Well, it can't be helped now.
IRINA. Two weeks ago he lost money, in December he lost money. I wish he'd hurry up and lose everything, then perhaps we'd go away from this town. My God, every night I dream of Moscow, it's perfect madness [laughs]. We'll move there in June and there's still left February, March, April, May . . . almost half a year.
MASHA. The only thing is Natasha must not hear of his losses.
IRINA. I don't suppose she cares.
[CHEBUTYKIN, who has only just got off his bed -- he has been resting after dinner -- comes into the dining-room combing his beard, then sits down to the table and takes a newspaper out of his pocket.]
MASHA. Here he is . . . has he paid his rent?
IRINA [laughs]. No. Not a kopek for eight months. Evidently he's forgotten.
MASHA [laughs]. How gravely he sits. [They all laugh; a pause.]
IRINA. Why are you so quiet, Alexandr Ignatyevitch?
VERSHININ. I don't know. I'm longing for tea. I'd give half my life for a glass of tea. I've had nothing to eat since the morning.
CHEBUTYKIN. Irina Sergeyevna!
IRINA. What is it?
CHEBUTYKIN. Come here. Venez ici. [IRINA goes and sits down at the table.] I can't do without you. [IRINA lays out the cards for patience.]
VERSHININ. Well, if they won't bring tea, let's discuss something.
TUZENBAKH. By all means. What?
VERSHININ. What? Let us dream . . . for instance of the life that will come after us, in two or three hundred years.
TUZENBAKH. Well? When we are dead, men will fly in balloons, change the fashion of their coats, will discover a sixth sense, perhaps, and develop it, but life will remain just the same, difficult, full of mysteries and happiness. In a thousand years man will sigh just the same, "Ah, how hard life is," and yet just as now he will be afraid of death and not want it.
VERSHININ [after a moment's thought]. Well, I don't know. . . . It seems to me that everything on earth is bound to change by degrees and is already changing before our eyes. In two or three hundred, perhaps in a thousand years -- the time does not matter -- a new, happy life will come. We shall have no share in that life, of course, but we're living for it, we're working, well, yes, and suffering for it, we're creating it -- and that alone is the purpose of our existence, and is our happiness, if you like.
[MASHA laughs softly.]
TUZENBAKH. What is it?
MASHA. I don't know. I've been laughing all day.
VERSHININ. I was at the same school as you were, I didn't go to the Military Academy; I read a great deal, but I don't know how to choose my books, and very likely I read quite the wrong things, and yet the longer I live the more I want to know. My hair is turning grey, I'm almost an old man, but I know so little, oh so little! But all the same I think that I do know and thoroughly grasp what is essential and matters most. And how I should like to make you see that there is no happiness for us, that there ought not to be and will not be. . . . We must work and work, and happiness is the portion of our remote descendants [a pause]. If it's not for me, but at least it's for the descendants of my descendants. . . .
[FEDOTIK and RODE appear in the dining-room; they sit down and sing softly, playing the guitar.]
TUZENBAKH. You think it's no use even dreaming of happiness! But what if I'm happy?
VERSHININ. No, you're not.
TUSENBAGH [flinging up his hands and laughing]. It's clear we don't understand each other. Well, how am I to convince you?
[MASHA laughs softly.]
TUSENEACH [holds up a finger to her]. Laugh! [To VERSHININ] Not only in two or three hundred years but in a million years life will be just the same; it doesn't change, it remains stationary, following its own laws which we have nothing to do with or which, anyway, we'll never find out. Migratory birds, cranes for instance, fly backwards and forwards, and whatever ideas, great or small, stray through their minds, they'll still go on flying just the same without knowing where or why. They fly and will continue to fly, however philosophic they may become; and it doesn't matter how philosophical they are so long as they go on flying. . . .
MASHA. But still, isn't there a meaning?
TUZENBAKH. Meaning. . . . Here it's snowing. What meaning is there in that? [A pause.]
MASHA. I think man ought to have faith or ought to seek a faith, or else his life is empty, empty. . . . To live and not to understand why cranes fly; why children are born; why there are stars in the sky. . . . You've got to know what you're living for or else it's all nonsense and waste [a pause].
VERSHININ. And yet you're sorry when your youth is over, . . .
MASHA. Gogol says: it's dull living in this world, friends!
TUZENBAKH. And I say: it is difficult to argue with you, friends, Oh, well, I give up. . . .
CHEBUTYKIN [reading the newspaper]. Balzac was married at Berditchev.
[IRINA hums softly.]
CHEBUTYKIN. I really must put that down in my book [writes]. Balzac was married at Berditchev [reads the paper].
IRINA [lays out the cards for patience, dreamily]. Balzac was married at Berditchev.
TUZENBAKH. The die is cast. You know, Marya Sergeyevna, I've resigned my commission.
MASHA. So I hear. And I see nothing good in that. I don't like civilians.
TUZENBAKH. Never mind . . . [gets up]. I'm not good-looking enough for a soldier. But that doesn't matter, though . . . I'm going to work. If only for one day in my life, to work so that I come home at night tired out and fall asleep as soon as I get into bed . . . [going into the dining-room]. Workmen must sleep soundly!
FEDOTIK [to IRINA]. I bought these coloured pencils for you just now as I passed Pyzhikov's on Moscow Street. . . . And this penknife. . . .
IRINA. You've got used to treating me as though I were little, but I'm grown up, you know . . . [takes the coloured pencils and the penknife, joyfully]. How lovely!
FEDOTIK. And I bought a knife for myself . . . look . . . one blade, and another blade, a third, and this is for your ears, and here are scissors, and that's for cleaning your nails . . . .
RODE [loudly]. Doctor, how old are you?
CHEBUTYKIN. Me? Thirty-two [laughter].