IVANOV. Pray to God for me, Anya! (He goes, stops and thinks.) No, I can’t. (He exits.)
ANNA PETROVNA. Go on . . . (Sits at the table.)
LVOV (paces up and down the stage). Anna Petrovna, make yourself a rule: as soon as the clock strikes six, you have to go to your room and not come out until morning. The evening damp is bad for your health.
ANNA PETROVNA. Your wish is my command, sir.
LVOV. What’s “your wish is my command, sir” supposed to mean! I’m talking seriously.
ANNA PETROVNA. But I don’t want to be serious. (Coughs.)
LVOV. There, you see, you’re coughing already . . .
VII
LVOV, ANNA PETROVNA, and SHABELSKY.
SHABELSKY (comes out of the house in hat and overcoat). Where’s Nikolay? Have the horses been brought round? (Goes quickly and kisses Anna Petro-vna’s hand.) Good night, lovely lady! (Makes a face.) Gevalt![18] Excusink me, pliss! (Rapid exit.)
LVOV. Buffoon!
Pause; the distant strains of a concertina are heard.
ANNA PETROVNA. How boring! . . . Out there the coachmen and the cooks are having a dance, while I . . . I’m like some thing that’s been discarded . . . Yevgeny Konstantinovich, why are you pacing back and forth? Come over here, sit down! . . .
LVOV. I can’t sit down.
Pause.
ANNA PETROVNA. They’re playing “The Goldfinch” in the kitchen. (Sings.) “Goldfinch, goldfinch, where have you been? Drinking vodka on the hills so green?”
Pause.
Doctor, are your father and mother still alive?
LVOV. My father’s dead, my mother’s alive.
ANNA PETROVNA. Do you miss your mother?
LVOV. I’ve no time to miss anyone.
ANNA PETROVNA (laughs). The flowers return every spring, but joy never does. Who quoted that line to me? God help my memory . . . I think Nikolay quoted it. (Lends an ear.) The owl is screeching again!
LVOV. Then let it screech.
ANNA PETROVNA. Doctor, I’m beginning to think that Fate has dealt me a losing hand. Most people, who may be no better than I am, lead happy lives and never pay for their happiness. But I have paid for everything, absolutely everything! . . . And at such a cost! Why am I being charged such high interest? . . . My dear man, you’re always so solicitous of me, you’re so tactful, you’re afraid to tell me the truth, but you think I don’t know what sort of illness I have? I know all too well. Still, it’s boring to talk about . . . (in a Jewish accent.) Excusink me, pliss! Do you know how to tell funny stories?
LVOV. I don’t.
ANNA PETROVNA. Nikolay knows how. And I’m starting to wonder so much at the unfairness of people: why don’t they reciprocate love for love, why do they pay back truth with lies? Tell me: how long will my father and mother go on hating me? They live nearly forty miles from here, but I can feel their hatred, night and day, even in my dreams. And what can you prescribe to make sense of Nikolay’s tedium? He says he stops loving me only in the evenings, when he’s gnawed by tedium. I can understand that and put up with it, but imagine if he’s fallen out of love with me completely! Of course, that’s impossible, but what if all of a sudden? No, no, I mustn’t even think about it. (Sings.) “Goldfinch, goldfinch, where have you been?” (Shudders.) The horrible thoughts I have! . . . Doctor, you’re not a family man, so you can’t understand a lot of this . . .
LVOV. You wonder . . . (He sits beside her.) No, I wonder, wonder at you! Now, explain, spell it out for me, how could you, an intelligent, honorable, almost saintly woman, have let yourself be so brazenly tricked and dragged into this nest of screech owls? Why are you here? What do you have in common with this cold, heartless . . . but let’s leave your husband out of it!—what do you have in common with this vacuous, vulgar milieu? Oh, good God in heaven! . . . this constantly grumbling, decrepit, insane count, this creepy super-swindler Misha, making his vile faces . . . Explain to me, what are you doing here? How did you end up here?
ANNA PETROVNA (laughs). That’s exactly the way he used to talk . . . Word for word . . . But his eyes are bigger, and when he used to talk about something with enthusiasm, they’d be like glowing coals . . . Keep talking, keep talking!
LVOV (rises and waves his hand in dismissal). What am I supposed to talk about? Please go inside . . .
ANNA PETROVNA. You say that Nikolay’s this and that, six of one, half of a dozen of the other. How do you know this? Can you really analyze a person in six months’ time? Doctor, he’s a remarkable man, and I’m sorry that you didn’t get to know him two or three years ago. Now he’s depressed, taciturn, doens’t do anything, but in the past . . . Such splendor! . . . I fell in love with him at first sight. (Laughs.) One glimpse of him and I was caught in the mousetrap, snap! He said: let’s go . . . I cut myself off from everything, you know, the way people snip off withered leaves with a scissors, and I went . . .
Pause.
And now it’s different . . . Now he goes to the Lebedevs, to be entertained by other women, while I . . . sit in the garden and listen to the owl screeching. . . .
The WATCHMAN taps.[19]
Doctor, don’t you have any brothers?
LVOV. No.
ANNA PETROVNA sobs.
Well, what is it now? What’s wrong with you?
ANNA PETROVNA (rises). I can’t help it, Doctor, I’m going to go over there . . .
LVOV. Over where?
ANNA PETROVNA. Where he is . . . I’ll drive over there . . . Have them harness the horses . . . (Runs into the house.)
LVOV. No, I definitely refuse to practice under such conditions! It’s not bad enough that they don’t pay me a penny, but they also turn my feelings inside-out! . . . No, I refuse! Enough is enough! . . . (Goes into the house.)
Curtain
ACT TWO
A reception room in the Lebedevs’ house; there is an entry directly into the garden; doors right and left. Antique, expensive furniture. A chandelier, candelabrums, and pictures, all under dustcovers.[20]
I
ZINAIDA SAVISHNA, FIRST GUEST, SECOND GUEST, THIRD GUEST, KOSYKH, AVDOTYA NAZAROVNA, YEGORUSHKA, GAVRILA, MAID-SERVANT, OLD LADY GUESTS, YOUNG LADIES, and BABAKINA.
ZINAIDA SAVISHNA is sitting on a sofa. On both sides of her in armchairs are OLD LADY GUESTS; on straight chairs the YOUNG PEOPLE. In the distance, near the entry to the garden, people are playing cards;[21] among the players: KOSYKH, AVDOTYA NAZAROVNA, and YEGORUSHKA. GAVRILA is standing by the door at right; the MAID-SERVANT is handing round a tray of sweetmeats. Throughout the whole act guests circulate from the garden to the door at right and back again. BABAKINA enters through the door at right and heads for Zinaida Savishna.